Search Engines Change So Fast - Most Of What You Hear Is Wrong By Jerry West Few things are as important to online businesses as reliable Search Engine Optimization. Get listed high on top search engines and you can just about bet on getting a big boost in sales.
Businesses often spend big bucks on SEO experts, advice, and systems that are touted to deliver your site into the promised land of high rankings. The bad news is -- most of this advice is outdated, untested, or just plain wrong.
Here's why. Search engines are extremely complicated and constantly changing. What worked last year may be completely wrong today. What worked yesterday may be outdated by this afternoon. SEO advisors who get their information from discussion groups (as many do) are often repeating untested guesses, theories, and rumors. Sometimes they misinterpret what search engine changes really mean for real websites.
Keeping up with search engines has become a full-time job, not just for one person, but for a full team of seasoned pros. It takes that many trained people to pour through the hundreds of pages of new findings, and TEST new methodologies.
Google has partnered with Rails-to-Trails (RTC), a nonprofit focused on creating a network of trails from former rail lines, to add biking directions to Google Maps.
Google Maps now has biking route details for more than 150 U.S. cities covering more than 12,000 miles of trails and bike lanes. Google says it plans to continue to add new trail information to Google Maps and is requesting feedback from riders via the "Report a Problem" tool.
The new feature allows Google Maps users to type in their destination and receive directions for the best bicycling route. Google says its algorithm is weighted to prefer routing on trails instead of roads open to automobile traffic as long as it won't take cyclists too far out of the way.
"We're thrilled to be working with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy to make RTC's extensive bike trail data available through Google Maps and Google Earth," says Shannon Guymon, Product Manager for Google Maps.
"Bikers all over the country now will be able to explore new trails or find specific directions in their local community with just a few clicks of their mouse."
February was a quiet month for the search market; we're not going to suggest any companies either break out the champagne or fire their CEOs as a result of the small changes that took place. Still, for those who are curious, comScore believes it was Google and Bing that came out looking like winners.
Google managed to increase its share of the U.S. search market to 65.5 percent, up from 65.4 percent in January, according to comScore's data. Bing, meanwhile, accomplished a more impressive feat (in overall terms, and especially in relation to its size) by grabbing 0.2 percent of market share.
That put Bing in control of 11.5 percent of the market, up from 11.3 percent the month before.
Yahoo's share of the search market then decreased, heading from 17.0 percent to 16.8 percent. Which is embarrassing, but not yet catastrophic, as the company's partnership with Microsoft moves towards completion.
The interesting thing will be if Bing and Yahoo keep trading share. Also, of course, if Google keeps increasing its dominance. We'll be sure to cover comScore's next report to see if any trends have emerged.
With the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament starting next week (March 16), it's no surprise the majority (83%) of fans will watch coverage on television, while 44 percent will go online and 10 percent will use a mobile device, according to a new survey by Unicast.
Among those planning to follow the tournament online or on a mobile device, a majority will visit ESPN.com (69%). Other branded popular sports sites fans plan to visit include Yahoo Sports (42%), Fox (24%), CBS (29%), and AOL (17%).
More than a quarter of fans following the tournament (26%) will visit NCAA.com, while 17 percent will type in the URL for their favorite team.
Fans will also gather information on the tournament via search engines (22%), social networks (18%), or newspaper/magazine sites (20%).
"On the heels of the extensive online coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament offers online publishers another premium sporting event that will generate high traffic from consumers looking to follow the tournament outside their living rooms," said Bryan Hjelm, VP of Marketing for Unicast.
"Digital innovations like iPhone apps, online bracket tools and streaming video are bringing basketball fever to a growing online audience of fans.
"Sites like ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports will dominate traffic due to their inherent sports fan user base, which make them prime real estate this month for marketers targeting the typical visitor - men aged 18 to 35."
The most popular online activities for those following March Madness include:
*58% Monitor scores *54% Watch games live *53% Check the status of brackets *49% Watch game highlights *42% Fill out brackets/participate in a pool
MySpace launched a new gaming experience at myspace.com/games today. The company says it empowers developers with new tools, analytics, and opportunities for driving usage and revenue.
"Gaming is core to the overall entertainment value of MySpace; we are replicating our success from MySpace Music for this next round of platform improvements," a representative for MySpace tells WebProNews. "Nearly a third of MySpace users engage daily in games and there are more than 28 million active app users on the site." She says the site "offers users discovery and sharing of games in a simpler and cleaner experience."
"Nearly one-third of MySpace users engage daily with games. We believe the new experience will empower even more of the MySpace audience to discover, share, and showcase games, which along with music and movies, are core to our content strategy," said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones. "We've been working with our developer partners to understand where they’d like to see MySpace go; based on that feedback we started rebuilding MySpace Games. These are the first steps in offering robust tools for developers to help their businesses thrive."
MySpace says developers can now:
- Review application-specific analytics via a new API, including invitation conversions, active users, notification responses and demographics.
- Build games in rich, 3D-like quality with Unity's powerful 3D engine and allow MySpace users to access the games with a new plug-in. For example, Paradise Paintball utilizes this technology.
- Encourage cross-platform competition with Scoreloop, which allows games on different platforms to share the same high scores, achievements, challenges and buddy lists.
- Utilize GroovyCortex, which is a cloud-based solution for onsite application developers, to provide low latency push data for multiplayer games.
- Track the source of application invitations and utilization to learn how users are finding and choosing specific games.
Along with the new MySpace Games site, MySpace announced a MySpace Games iPhone app, nine new social games, and a Gallery. Earlier this week, MySpace announced that it has the most popular social app on Android.
It appears that the new MySpace Games experience hasn't fully rolled out yet.
really the only way you can know an optimization or marketing strategy is going to work. My team constantly tests new strategies in real life situations to see how search engines will respond.
In general, it's good to learn how at least some of the Net's most important search engine features (like Google's vital PageRank system) work. You should also learn how to use meta tags and Overture to get your site listed quickly and in a way that will bring you more visitors and sales.
If you really want better ranking for your site, you are well advised to get the help of a qualified SEO professional. Choose a firm that specializes in SEO or SEM. You'll know which ones are the most successful because THEIR sites are ranked high in search engines.
About The Author: Jerry West is founder of leading SEO firm Web Marketing Now, recently celebrating their 6th anniversary. See Jerry's extensive tips on how to get better ranking for your site AND subscribe to his frequent insider updates at http://www.WebMarketingNow.com Reach Jerry at info@WebMarketingNow.com
Here are some articles to start with..
Search Engine Marketing Companies Medium blue was ranked number one in a study of leading search engine marketing companies we offer services other online marketing companies can't. Advanced search Read more...
Affordable Search Engine Optimization for Unprecedented Business Leads Affordable search engine uses different methods which are undertaken to optimize a website in search engines. For doing online business it is imperative to adopt search engine optimization methods to Read more...
