June SEM Links

by Scott Allen

A lot has happened in the SEM industry this month. I was going to post some of these on earlier this month, but amid a torrent of crazy events, including the “excitement” [cough **stress** cough] of the explosion and fire at the data center where some of our websites are hosted, things got a little pushed back. So, I’ve continued gathering these over the last few weeks, and there are some great links that you will want to check out.

Competitive Research

• Make the Most of SEO Competitive Research: Evaluating the Competition | Search Engine Journal
  Anne Smarty discusses the importance of uncovering strategic data about your competitors along with some practical tips.
   
• Tools to Evaluate Your SEO Competition | Search Engine Journal
  A follow up to Anne’s previous post with tools to help automate the competitive intelligence gathering process.
   
• Google Trends Comes To Web Sites: Trends For Web Sites | Search Engine Land
  Google launches their new “Google Trends for Websites” tools that exposes data for websites. This can now be used for competitive intelligence, at no cost.
   
• Google’s Two Tiered Internet World Sinks to a New Low | Graywolf
  Michael Gray discusses Google’s hypocrisy about displaying everyone else’s sensitive data but not their own. He has some good points.

E-Commerce

• What Online Consumers Want: A Personalized Experience
  Some great info on what online consumers want. This type of data can guide us all in improving our e-commerce solutions.

Flash SEO

• Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed | TechCrunch
  Adobe provides tools to search engines to help them index Flash. The day may be near that Flash can be search engine friendly.

General SEO

• Improved SEO Documentation Galore! | Matt Cutts
  Matt Cutts discusses how Google has upgraded their Webmaster Guidelines.
   
• How Google Defines IP Delivery, Geolocation, and Cloaking | Google Webmaster Blog
   
• 404 Not Found Pages: The Good, The Bad & The Funny | Get Elastic
   
• PageRank Sculpting - Ok Or Penalty Material? 10 SEO Experts Respond | UK Search Engine Marketing
  An excellent post with a balanced discussion of PageRank sculpting, with input from SEO professionals.
   
• SEO Has No Future? Think Again! | Search Rank
  David Wallace provides an excellent response to those who think SEO has no future.
   
• Father Knows Best When It Comes To Links - This Month In SEO - 6/08 | TheVanBlog
  Steven has some more great links you need to check out.

Link Building

• Go Where Your Link Audience Hangs and Bait Them | The Link Spiel
  Debra has some great tips for link building.
   
• The Achilles Heel of Free and Natural Links | Jim Boykin
  Jim offers some thoughts on why manual link building is still important.

Linkbait

Last month things were a bit explosive with some fictional linkbait created by Lyndon Antcliff. (Or should we call it Lyndobait?)

• Doing A Fake Story For Linkbait? Disclose - Or Face The Wrath Of Google | Search Engine Land
   
• Matt Cutts Suggests Google Penalties For Fake Stories | Nick Wilsdon
   
• Linkbuilding Using Fiction | Cornwall SEO
   
• Original linkbait story here: 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers | Money UK

Local Search

• BOTW Local Goes Beta
  BOTW showcases a new offering, BOTW Local. Definitely worth checking out.

Mobile SEO

• How to Simply Create Your Own Mobile Website | Search Engine Guide
  Ross Dunn offers some practical tips for making your site friendly to mobile browsers and search engines.

Online Branding

• Defending Your Brand From Shadow Brands & Email Spam | SEO Book
  Aaron Wall offers some tips for protecting your online brand.

Social Media

• Social Media Used To Be About Sharing | Bruce Clay Blog
  Lisa Barone shares some great thoughts on what is happening to social media.
   
• How NOT to Do Social Media Marketing | About.com Entrepreneurs
  Scott Allen (the other Scott Allen) discusses some poor techniques that can give your company a bad name.
   
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners | Dosh Dosh
  Maki offers some thoughts about how to use Twitter effectively.
   
• Power-Tweeting: 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter | Inside CRM
  Todd Mintz offers a comprehensive list of ways to use Twitter.

Stats / Research / Analytics

• Top 50 US Web Rankings Issued for May, Google No. 1 for Second Time | Marketing Charts
  Interesting data on top websites for April.
   
• Google Adds API To Webmaster Tools | Search Engine Land
  Now you can access your Google Analytics data remotely through an API.
   
• 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics | Marketing Pilgrim
  An excellent article by Linda Bustos about dialing in your Google Analytics implementation.

 

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