http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html
Google launces SearchWiki, the ability to make search your own.

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/11/14-competitive-intelligence-tools.html
Competitve Intelligence slide deck Andy Beal including his Trackur.com tool.

http://www.shimonsandler.com/structuring-a-link-campaign/
Shimon Sandler is promoting his link building service.  Good insight into what is current working for effective link building.

http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/link-advertising-program-inlinkscom-text-link-ads/
Michael Gray discusses a new service from Text Link Ads and recaps his well known stance on paid link advertising.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/11/17/facebook-internally-seoing-brand-pages-wants-more-traffic-and-google-juice/
Facebook add new links on public profiles…this matters for SEO.

http://www.ninebyblue.com/blog/is-pagerank-the-ultimate-measure-of-online-influence/
Vanessa Fox discusses Page Rank and Online Influence on her new website…I wonder what the significance of nine BY BLUE.  Vannessa provides an SEO overview blog post with her best SEO posts at http://www.ninebyblue.com/reference-articles/seach-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-the-beginning/

http://www.seobook.com/art-seo-proposal
Great post about SEO proposals, a follow-up to http://www.seobook.com/how-be-seo-service-provider. Follow-up post -> http://www.seobook.com/how-keep-seo-clients

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/must-have-seo-tools
A list of 6 must have tools for SEO…I can’t seem to pass up a SEO Tool list.

The Google ranking algorithm does use relevancy for its search results.  There are 3 main components - Technical, Content, and Links.  The first two items - Technical and Content - are primarily based on your website.  The third - Links - is the basis for Google PageRank, which is collective the most dominant of the 3 components.

You can find more information regarding PageRank here - > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

In this example, I might build links for “Credit Cards” and “Credit Card Offers”, but not “Offers”  This is because you can build relevance for ‘Keyword Phrase 1′ and ‘Keyword Phrase 2′, if both are relevant to your website.  However, the content and the linking will be harder to establish relevancy for “Offers” as a stand-alone phrase.

In addition, once you rank for a particular keyword like “Credit Cards”…Google will watch the behavior of its users to see if they like to visit your site after typing this keyword and it if seems like a majority of users are happy with the result, this also confirms relevance.  All of this is done by algorithms, Google states in several public releases and their methodology supports that ‘hand-editing’ doesn’t occur for top rankings.

http://www.webuildpages.com/blog/sem-events/how-to-buy-links/
Lisa Barone live blogging from Pubcon in a Paid Links session with Rank Fishkin, John Lessnau and Aaron Wall. Todd Malicoat will moderate. Lisa metions the room is packed, paid links is usually one of the most attended sessions. Where is Matt Cutts and Michael Gray?

http://www.webuildpages.com/blog/sem-events/reputation-monitoring-management/
Another live blogging session post by Lisa Barone. Todd Friesen will moderate this one with speakers Jessica Berlin, Andy Beal and Lee Odden. Good information if you want to learn more about Reputation Management.

http://www.seobook.com/social-media-marketing-waste-time2
A rant by Aaron Wall at SEOBook regarding Social Media Marketing. If you are considering Social Media Marketing or trying to compare it to the more established Paid Search Marketing model, this is definitely contains some good thoughts for you to consider.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/is-the-googles-yoyo-effect-the-evidence-of-a-new-algo-
Speculative article of a possible Google algorithm update based on recent yo-you of rankings.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-we-help-track-flu-trends.html
I actually saw this on CNBC(??) earlier this week. While I’m not sure that Google Trends can actually predict flu outbreaks, I think they produce an interesting ‘real-world’ correlation that can potentially grab the attention of the everyday internet user. While the statistical data model might be flawed, you have to hand it to Google on doing something interesting with its’ data.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/blog-carnivals-link-building/7999/
Amy Smarty writes about Blog Carnivals. Carnivals??? Fun is usually dangerous when it comes to link building. Group Writing Projects…that sounds a little safer strategy even though I think it is the same thing. More information on this concept available at http://groupwritingprojects.com/

1. As soon as possible, complete, optimize, and make available the smallest portion of the site which is useful. For example, upload just the home page and ordering page first, but include a notice that more information is under construction. This way, search engines will find and index the site earlier, but your non-SEO promotional efforts can wait until all construction has been finished. Then you can have a “grand opening” (perhaps using a press release) to show users all that your site has to offer. Keep in mind that it typically takes months after a website is first indexed in Google before it has a chance of gaining high search result positions there.

2. Work on SEO keyword targeting, META tag creation, and search engine “spider” accessibility while the site is under construction, not later. This will save time when you don’t have to rewrite or update pages for SEO in the future. Be sure to incorporate a Site Map into your design. It is also good to learn about proper internet promotional techniques during this process, so you aren’t deceived into applying any detrimental practices like posting to FFA pages or trading links with completely unrelated web sites. Don’t hurry to finish all of the pages immediately or to start promoting the site in any way possible.

3. Don’t submit the incomplete site to directories or try reciprocal linking until it has been finished. Otherwise, the operators of directories or other sites will be less likely to find your site impressive enough to link to, and your chance to be listed will probably be lost. However, it is generally acceptable to send free link submissions to major directories which take months to approve them, as long as the construction process is expected to finish in under a month. Make a list of any directories you submit to, as it can be difficult to remember, and it’s best not to submit to the same directory more than once.

Following these SEO tips will help your site attain higher rankings in search results at an earlier date, with fewer changes needed when it is no longer under construction. This will also prevent mistakes which could undermine the site’s success.

http://www.copyscape.com
One of Aaron’s 8 tips discusses Duplicate Content. I have made it regular practice to check for duplicate content on every site continuously by either searching an exact long phrase with Google directly or using the Copyscape service.

http://www.majesticseo.com/search.php
This tool was recommended by Aaron Wall in the previous blog post. It is an interesting tool to check for backlink patterns of anchor text, deep links, and unique ip addresses.  You initially only get basic information, but you receive a full report once you verify your site.

http://www.SEMRush.com
A new competitive research tool by the same guys that did SEO Digger.  It seems to compete directly against SpyFU and Compete.com.  I will check it out in more detail later this week as I don’t like the SpyFu.com interface and Compete.com is a little expensive for my tastes.

http://www.ViralConverstions.com
Micheal Gray - Graywolf has launched a new website that connects business owners with bloggers who want to do product reviews. The difference is that bloggers are not paid for links but might possibly get free products like a free book or other interesting offers. Interesting concept as it is definitely a way around ‘paid links’; will ‘bartered links’ be next on the horizon for the big G?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/445594376/whiteboard-friday-whats-pagerank-got-to-do-with-it
SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday covers Page Rank and What It Has To Do With SEO.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/onetime-or-ongoing-seo-is-it-a-yes-or-no-question
An interesting SEO Strategy post by IgniteMedia about whether One Time or Ongoing SEO Is Best? User contribution from http://www.ignite-media.com/

http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/smx-london/
Powerpoint presentation from “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques at SMX London.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2008/11/sizing_up_the_long_tail_of_sea.html
Dustin Woodard does a guest post at the Hitwise blog which shows that the Long Tail of Search could actually be 90+ % of natural search traffic–meaning the tail could be without much of a head or body.

The reason so much importance is placed on the page title is that it helps search engines understand what a web page is all about, thereby increasing the relevance of search results. However, recently there has been some question as to whether longer page titles rank better or not. Here are some thoughts on that topic:

Many experts wonder if there is a downside to having title tags that match a popular search query exactly. The reasoning behind this train of thought is that these types of title tags will be seen as an advertising attempt to trick the user into clicking rather than true content to help searchers.

So, this may be one reason a longer page title could rank better than one that includes only the searched term or phrase.  We have found that a 5-6 phrases followed by the company seems to work best.  Here is one example of a page title we have done:

Another thought is that the end user experience is better with a longer page title. This would be because it’s generally easier to understand a page’s content with a longer title.

If you do decide to go with a longer title, though you don’t want to make it overly long. Keep in mind that Google only displays the first 63 characters in search results so the searcher won’t see more than that.

While Yahoo and MSN show more characters it’s best to go with a title that can be displayed fully on all 3 major search engines. You also only want to use your best, or most important, keywords. Typically pages rank better when there is more than one keyword in the tag.

So, it seems as though the answer may be that medium page titles work best. You don’t want a title that seems spammy to the search engines or the end user on one hand. But, on the other hand you don’t want a title that will be cut off so that your topic isn’t clearly shown to the search engines and end users.

We see many sites that go over-board and place 100 - 125 characters in the title tag.   While not confirmed, Google is always looking for ’signs’ of a spammy site and a long, keyword rich TITLE.   Our recommendation is to use the full 63 characters for the page TITLE without going over and place your most important keywords first.   In addition, if you are going to put your company or website name into the title, we recommend doing that at the end of the page title.

http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+marketing&pws=0&hl=en&num=10&gl=au

This is a quick way to check Search Results in other countries as well as average position for Google Adwords campaigns.  Here is a list of ISO country codes from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1

To some extent, search engines prefer sites with relevant domain names when determining which results should appear first. Although other factors can limit the SEO impact of a domain name containing relevant keyword(s), it will rank better in results for these words.

A domain name like nebraska-classifieds.info will help a web site rank higher for the search phrase “Nebraska classifieds”, compared to the classifieds page of a general site about Nebraska (or the Nebraska page of a classifieds site), particularly on MSN and Live Search.

However, the other sites may still outrank it if they have more inbound links or have been better optimized in other ways. Other forms of SEO and marketing in general cannot be neglected just because a site has a good name; some of the best domain names on the web have relatively poor traffic and search rankings.

Also, domain names may help SEO by encouraging searchers to click on search results based upon the URLs appearing below each listing. For example, people are more likely to visit and read an article about rotary engines at Cars.com than a similar page at AOL.com. Although this is not always true, searchers will consider the web site specialized to their subject of interest to be more knowledgeable about it than a site which is more general, or primarily about a different subject.

A short domain name can also make a web site appear more authoritative and credible to search engine users, especially if it has a .net, .org, or .edu extension. Some engines also allow users to restrict their searches to sites with a specific extension of their choice, although it is unclear how many people actually use this feature.

Brief, authoritative-sounding domain names help web sites in ways beyond SEO as well. People are more likely to link to them, use them as research sources, and type them into the browser address bar. Such names are also more memorable.

The visual attractiveness of search results and the rankings assigned by search engines are important parts of SEO. Short, relevant domain names help SEO efforts in both ways, making them a valuable component to any promotional campaign.

Here are a few potential reasons why your SEO isn’t working.

1. Outdated Methods - The effectiveness of different techniques changes from year to year, and some are no longer useful. You should consider researching newer methods of conducting SEO if your techniques include things like putting a hundred different words in the “keywords” META tag, purchasing links on pages that aren’t related to your site in any way, or commenting on blogs that now use the “nofollow” attribute. Certain outdated techniques, like putting a long list of keywords at the end of the page (typically in a very small font) or posting to FFA (Free For All) link pages, can actually worsen a site’s position in search results instead of improving it.

2. Not Enough Time -Even if your techniques are correct, another one of the reasons why your SEO campaign may not be working is because you don’t spend enough time on it. SEO shouldn’t be viewed as an afterthought; efforts to design and create content for a web site are wasted if it receives little or no traffic. There are numerous important tasks associated with SEO; optimizing URLs and META tags, obtaining inbound links, researching keywords, improving keyword density, submitting to directories, creating a site map, and so on. Many companies pay marketing firms to carry out SEO work, thus saving time and ensuring that effective techniques are applied.

3. Too Impatient - One of the reasons why your SEO efforts might seem not to be working is that you haven’t waited long enough to see an effect. Search engines need to index pages, find new links, update rankings, and so on - which doesn’t happen immediately. It typically takes longer (especially for new web sites) to see results from SEO on Google than MSN, Live.com, or GigaBlast. Submitting a new site to the major engines can help expedite the results a bit. If it is your goal to start receiving traffic immediately, consider using a different promotional method like PPC (Pay-Per-Click) or paid inclusion until your SEO campaign starts working effectively.

After identifying and responding to the reasons why your SEO isn’t working, you will have a better chance of achieving high rankings in search results and gaining more traffic to your web site.  If you would like a professional review of your website, check out our Website SEO Audit service.

After you make the decision to use Firefox though, it can be overwhelming deciding which plugins you should use. To that end, here is a list of the 7 highly useful plugins and what you can use them for:

1. SEOQuake – This tool helps analyze search results and various parameters that may influence SEO such as Google PR (Google PageRank of current page), Google Index (Number of indexed pages. Google version), Google link (Number of links, pointed to the current page. Google version (Except links from concerned domain) as well as similar parameters for many other search engines (Yahoo, MNS, Yandex, Rambler, Baidu) and some other miscellaneous parameters.

2. SEOpen: Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization, including Google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar. (Note: Not yet compatible with Firefox 3.0)

3. SEO Link Analysis: Adds display of PageRank, linktext and nofollow links to external links in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft Webmaster Portal.

4. Mahalo Share: Share and recommend Web pages across many different services; recommend a link once and have it automatically posted to any of Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, Ma.gnolia, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Facebook, Pownce, StumbleUpon, Mahalo, Faves, or Google Bookmarks.

5. SearchStatus: Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

6. RankQuest SEO Toolbar: RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensure the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

7. About This Site: One-click access to web site metadata - traffic, related and linked pages, and more - added to the Tools menu and context menu.