At just about every new client meeting that is related to our SEO services, you are asked how does Google work and who do I contact Google directly to pay them? I normally replay that if I tell them how to contact Google I would be out of a job (with a cheeky smile on my face), then I explain how it works.

Now you can just Watch the video below staring Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) to find out how Google’s ranking and website evaluation process works.

Take a few minutes to read a few of the blog posts that I found last week surfing this thing the kids call the “internet“.

Yes they are SEO related so if you are not interested in improving your website performance in the search engines, hold on, of course you are interested, otherwise your business is going to be sucked into the outer reaches of the universe where no one can find you!

Link Building Strategies – The Complete List

Without doubt this is the new bible when it comes to building links! An absolute killer resource on different strategies you can use, the effectiveness and possible time frame.

Read more at – Point Blank SEO

4 Steps to Optimize Your eCommerce Landing Pages

As you know eCommerce is booming and taking those site visitors from window shoppers to purchaser is essential for the success of your business. unbounce have carved a reputation for themselves in doing just that so take note of what they have to say on the matter. You may also find this post interesting – Is your mCommerce website mobile friendly?

Read more at – unbounce

Explode your keyword list for linkbuilding magic

I love this article! It is a great way to start any SEO campaign for yourself or a client. It will show you how to expand your keyword list using several tools so that you can identify longtail search terms around your main terms so that you can create content and build links to your site using all of the related terms, still rank for your head terms, AND capture the longtail traffic!

Read more at – John Doherty

Search quality highlights: 50 changes for March

Ahh Google you mythical beast! In the world of SEO, Google is forever adjusting their algorithm that is responsible for where your website shows in the search results. If you want to take a look at 50 changes they made just last month, this article is for you!

Read more at – Inside Search by Google

Excel and Google Docs: Tools for the Ultimate SEO Dashboard

Tools and apps make our life easier, and SEO geeks love tools and apps that are useful. It helps us save time and get the tjob moving forward so we can deliver results to our clients. If you want to check out some Google Docs and Excel tools take a look at the article.

Read more at – SEOmoz.org

Linkpreneurs: the new school of link building

An aspect of SEO that is loved by those in the industry and hated by the those that aren’t is the continual evolution of learning how to build links.

Read more at – Linkpreneurs

Internet enabled smartphones and tables have changed the way we do a lot of things in our everyday life and they are even affecting the way we shop online!!

If your mCommerce website is not mobile friendly, take a few minutes to read the below articles and I think you will want to make the move to a mobile friendly website.

Online retail optimism driving move to mCommerce: eBay

The results of the 2012 OBI revealed enormous success for Australia’s top online retailers last year, with eBay’s top 2000 local sellers increasing their revenue by 45 percent over the previous year. The eBay ‘Millionaires Club’ also grew by 31 percent, with 157 businesses surpassing the $1 million mark in eBay sales.

Read more at – Dynamic Business

The future of mobile

This article looks closely at the growth of smartphones and tablets, the platform wars, and how consumers are actually using their devices.

Read more at – Business Insider.

The growth of mobile commerce: infographic

This infographic from IMRG and eDigital Research contains some great stats on mCommerce growth from 2009 to 2012 in a nice infographic.

Read more at – Econsultancy.

PayPal now processing 1,000 mobile transactions per hour

This article is from late 2011 and as the heading suggests, PayPal is processing 1,000 mobile transactions per hour and that was in 2011. Any guesses how many they are processing now?

Read more at – Dynamic Business.

Google wants to help you get into the world of mobile friendly websites because it is booming, especially with mCommerce websites and they have created a tool to help you see how your website appears on mobile devices, evaluates how user friendly the site is and even give you recommendations on what you can do to make it more usable for your site visitors.

The tool is called GoMo and here is a short video from Google introducing it.

Don’ts In SEO

1. Having No Value Proposition – What is you point(s) of differentiation that sets you apart from your competition? Use those point(s) in your site to create value to the consumer.
2. Segmented Approach – Be wary of setting SEO-related goals without making sure they’re aligned with your company’s overall objectives and the goals of other departments. Everyone loves intergration!
3. Workaround Hacks – Avoid implementing a hack rather than researching new features or best practices that could simplify development (e.g., changing the timestamp on an updated URL so it’s crawled more quickly instead of easily submitting the URL through Fetch as Googlebot).
4. SEO Trends – SEO is a fast moving industry, avoid being influenced by trends and the latest “tricks” to boost your rankings. Instead, work on the fundamentals that will bring you long term success.
5. Slow iteration – Be agile rather than promote an environment where the infrastructure and/or processes make improving your site, or even testing possible improvements, difficult.

Do’s In SEO

1. Be Unique – Do something cool and unique that makes your site stand out from the competition, in a good way of course!
2. Include Relevant Word In Your Copy – Think like your potential consumer/searcher. What query would you use to find your business, products, services or answer their questions? For example; you may be a “flower designer” but most people would search with term “florist” and they may have a question related to store opening hours, product specs or reviews. It helps to know your customer and answer their potential questions for them.
3. Be Smart With Tags & Site Architecture – Be unique with your title tags and meta descriptions. Remeber those points of differentiation? Include them in your tags to help increase click throughs from search results to your website. You don’t have to rank in the #1 position if you are more attractive to your consumer than your competition!
4. Attract Buzz – Buzz creates links, Google +1s, Facebook Likes and mentions on Twitter. These are all signals to Google on how consumers value your information and will help boost your Google rankings.
5. Stay Fresh & Relevant – Keep content up-to-date and consider options such as building a social media presence (if that’s where a potential audience exists) or creating an ideal mobile experience if your users are often on-the-go.
6. Webmaster Tools – Your new best friend. Sign up and get notices from Google if they think something is out of kilter with your website. They also provide some great updates to their tools and how you can use them to your advantage.

Yelp Is In Australia

A Quick Introduction To Yelp

Yelp is a review site that has been operating in the US since 2004 and as of the 30th of November 2011, it is in Australia (smh article).

Consumers use it to find information on local businesses, events and special offers. This allows you as the business owner to reach out to your local community and can put Yelp to work for you by building exposure for your business, monitoring reviews of your business and services, as well as researching your local community by reading other reviews to see what consumers want, like and don’t like.

Why Use Yelp For Local SEO

Yelp should be part of your local SEO strategy from now!

Yelp is one of those websites that has been around the block a few times and Google trusts and pulls the reviews left by the Yelpers (that is what the cool kids like to be called that leave reviews on Yelp) to your Google Places page for your business.

This adds content and often keyword phrases that you want to rank in the search results to your Google Place page, giving Google a better indication of when they should display your listing to searchers.

Time To Get Some Reviews

Firstly, you need to join Yelp and create a personal account, now you will be able to create a business account.

A few ideas to help get you some reviews:

• Tell people in your social media worlds and other online communities that you have a business profile on Yelp and you would love them to leave a review
• Email your database asking for them to leave a review
• Ask your current clients to leave you some kind works
• If someone sends you a testimonial, send them a link to your Yelp business profile and ask them to leave the testimonial as a review
• Add a link from your email signature to your Yelp business listing
• Place a sign up in your business telling people to look for you on Yelp
• Offer discounts and make announcements on Yelp to help encourage Yelpers to use your business and leave reviews

Please keep in mind that Yelp is brand new in Australia and we are not sure if it will gain traction like it has in other countries. That being said it does not hurt being an early adopter of this free service.

You can read more on Yelp in Australia at:

• mUmBRELLA – Community search site Yelp launches in Australia
• Dynamic Business – Yelp Australia to promote local businesses

When was the last time you used Bing over Google? Hard to remember isn’t it!

So how should Bing get back in the limelight? Joining forces with one of the world’s most influential musical icons, Jay-Z should do it! There was a little something in for Jay-Z as well, this campaign helped build buzz around Decoded (available on Amazon), Jay-Z’s book that was about to hit shelves.

Watch the video to see what they came up with, it is pretty cool.

The Outcome

Bing

• They have aligned themselves with one of the world’s most influential musical talents
• Became part of the culture in the pop and hip hop worlds – WOW!
• An 11.7% increase in visits
• Entered the global Top 10 Most Visited Sites for the first time
• Earned 1.1 billion global media impressions

Jay-Z

• Facebook followers grew by over 1 million
• Decoded hit the best sellers list for 19 straight weeks
• Media coverage from all the major sources and influences across all mediums

The results are pretty amazing for both parties involved, but I don’t think I will be making the switch to Bing, will you?

Want to know more about Bing and Jay-Z joining forces, here are some other articles from around the blogosphere:

• Trendland – Jay-Z “Decoded”: Amazing Viral Marketing
• This is not ADVERTISING – Bing – Decode Jay-Z
• Encoderpr – Inspiring Case Study: Bing’s BIG Transmedia IDEA with Jay-Z
• Engaging content – Droga 5 Decoded Campaign with Jay-Z

As I am writing this Yahoo Site Explorer is still alive, but unfortunately Yahoo Site Explorer will pass away peacefully.

Yahoo Site Explorer - We Miss You Already!

From all the people that have loved spending time with you over the years, we cherish the link data thta you gathered for us when others like Google couldn’t be trusted. For that we thank you and godspeed!

Other thoughts and announcements:

• Search Engine Land – Yahoo Site Explorer Closing Down
• Yahoo Announcement – Site Explorer Reminder

So what is everyone using now, any recommendations, Open Site Explorer or other paid tool recommendations?

After meeting the Automatician, John Ford (@iamjohnford) at WordCamp Gold Coast, you quickly get that Automatic, the folks behind Jetpack, are really in the business of making life easier when it comes to running a website.

Enter Jetpack 1.2 and some of the super cool new features:

• Subscriptions – The biggest addition to Jetpack  in my opinion. Now you can easily add  a widget to your sidebar that allows visitors to subscribe to your site, WordPress will automatically send them a notification. Additionally, visitors have the opportunity to subscribe to a post after leaving a comment so they can keep up-to-date with the conversation. Nice!
• Sharing – Not a new feature, but has had LinkedIn and Google+ added to the options.
• Shortcode Embeds – Again, not a new feature, just a few extras added to make life easier on you.
• Extra Sidebar Widgets – RSS links, Twitter and Image Widgets.
• plus a few other little additions.

At the end of the day, if you are not running Jetpack, you should be! If  you are, make sure you update Jetpack  to keep your WordPress powered site in the now!

You can read the official announcement at Announcing Jetpack 1.2 or follow the discussion over at WPCandy – The Jetpack plugin version 1.2 is all clear for take off.

Your Man Reminder app has been created for a very serious problem, with the use of some fantastic digital marketing.

For example; they have leveraged YouTube and other video networks to promote the app with the hope that the video will “go viral”. At the time of writing this post, the video has had over 940,000 views in approximately 20 days – that is pretty impressive.

Here is the video, Warning: Partial nudity and 6 packs.

The Your Man Reminder app itself also ticks all the boxes that we listed here – 5 App Marketing Tips For Your Brand & Business. The app gives a fun side to a very serious problem by attractive guys reminding and encouraging women to do self-checks or go and get a checkup. Additionally, the app also gives you reminders for doctor’s appointments and important facts about breast cancer.

Breast Cancer was the most common cancer among Australian women, accounting for 27% of all cancer diagnoses and was also a leading cause of cancer-related death in 2007 (Source: Australian Government – Cancer Australia). Early diagnosis is critical to reduce the death rate and using digital technology can play a major role.

Resources

• Your Man Reminder – App Store
• Breast Cancer Statistics – Australian Government
• John St. – The Digital Agency in Toronto that is behind the campaign