BrightEdge Weekly Search Recap – 7/15
This week in search we continued to hear more about the continuing trend of social being incorporated into search engines, as well as the increased responsibilities that accompany present day SEO as well as a few basic tips for building your website.
1. Dragon Go! Voice Search for iPhone is Surprisingly Intelligent
On the card, a picture of an iPhone, a greenish tongue of flame, and the words “Introducing…. Dragon Go!”
2. Facebook Blocks Google’s Shot at Social
In response to Google+, the Google social network that’s currently in a limited beta, Facebook is taking some dramatic steps. Facebook has blocked tools that would allow for easy migration to Google+, which follows an earlier hiring of a PR firm in May this year to discredit Google+.
If you’re curious about all things Google+, you’re in luck. The project’s technical lead, Google engineer Joseph Smarr, is currently hosting an online question and answer session about the service — and he has already shared a number of details about Google+’s development, technology, and plans for the future.
4. The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded
When I started in the SEO field (circa 2003), the job responsibilities weren’t easy, but the list was relatively small. Over the next 5 years, those responsibilities increased, but it was primarily in tactical and knowledge sorts of ways.
5. Seriously Google! Badges For Reading News?
Google News has announced they are now in the achievements and badge award game! Yay!
6. Google Accelerates Google+ for Business Test Program
Google, which had initially planned to test business partners on Google+ in the next “few months,” is moving more quickly with that program. A Google executive now says the company plans to announce a group of partners next week.
7. Is External Linking Good For SEO? – Whiteboard Friday
External linking doesn’t sound like it’s that difficult of a situation but for many SEOs there’s an ongoing debate about how you should do external linking on your website. This week Cyrus, our web strategist, goes over two very different methods of handling external linking on your website.
8. 37% More Incentive to Focus on SEO for Bing
Large search agency, Rosetta (recentl y acquired by Publicis), have conducted a study of organic search traffic to their clients’ websites in which they measured the percentage contribution of organic clicks from Yahoo, Bing and Google and segmented the data into vertical markets. The study found that the Bing-Yahoo search alliance presented significant competition to Google in the financial services and retail sector.
9. SEO 101: 6 Steps to Selecting Your Pages
After you’ve selected your keywords by building your target keyword list, the next goal in building a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is to match each of those keywords to pages on your website. Where do you start, though?
Internet companies are notoriously difficult to value, as investors learned in the dot-com crash 11 years ago. But since the “Web 2.0” companies fueling this year’s Internet IPOs rely upon having a reliable group of engaged users, they do offer at least one telling metric: the amount of money each user is worth.