Formula for Keyword Placement in SEO titles

The formula is pretty simple. The page should start with a headline, usually an <h1> which is the title of the article, content section starts with an <h2> and sub headings are usually an <h3> heading code tag. You should have 3 – 5 sections for every article. Each paragraph should have 3-5 supporting sentences. Paragraphs or groups of paragraphs should be grouped by adding sub headings.

How long should an article be?

Articles should have more than 300 words excluding titles, headings, and sub headings. Quotes from other websites should never be included in word count. It is very difficult to include enough keyword phrases in the article to get good ranking if you try to cram them together in articles that are too short. You should be covering at least 1 main exact match keyword phrase, 2-3 variations of that phrase, and 2-3 exact match keyword phrases related to the main phrase with their own 2-3 variations.

Start titles with your exact match keyword

If you can’t start the title with the keyword it is okay but keep in mind, that is your goal. Sometimes it won’t sound right and in those cases, don’t do it. It is very important this you do not alter the keyword phrase in the title. Some might add an “s” to make it plural or maybe add an “ed” to make it past tense. You have to use your imagination to make sure that the whole keyword phrase is used exactly as given.

First paragraph or summary keyword placement

Begin the first sentence of your first paragraph with the keyword phrase or at least a slight variation of it. At minimum include it in the first one or two sentences. It is also wise to include a related keyword or two here. If you don’t give the reader what they searched for in this paragraph you are going to lose their attention. This first paragraph should be a well written summary of what the reader will learn if they continue reading the entire article. It is a good thing to use the related keywords you chose for this paragraph to be in the sub headings as explained below.

Start page sections with your keywords

Every page should have a heading tag or an H2 tag headline that begins the content after the summary. Start the heading tag in your content with the keyword unless it reads awkward. Because this is the first sentence in your content it is important that this have the keyword in it but not sound like the title. Make it different and spicy. This is likely the deciding text on the page for readers as to whether or not the article contains the information they are looking for. Many people start reading from the title but some do not and we want to catch both group type’s attention.

Additional sub heading keyword placement

Separate sections of the article with h3 heading tags. In these sub headings place variations of the keyword phrase you are targeting. If not already accomplished make sure the related keywords that you placed in your first paragraph are contained in these sub heading sections as well. These are basically a mini-title for the paragraph(s) under neath it. If a user likes your title, your leading heading, or the first paragraph they still may skim the article looking for the specific section of the article that may contain the information they are looking for. Chunk-a-fying your content in this manner accommodates the skimmer type of reader.

Content paragraphs and keywords

Make sure there are at least 1 or 2 related keyword phrases that are on the same topic as your main keyword phrase. These paragraphs that are inbetween your sub headings are designed to provide greater details to the reader on the subjects listed in the sub headings. This is where the real meat of the article is. the rest of the items we have discussed are more navigation related. The purpose of titles, sub headings, etc. is to lead the reader to the information they are seeking with as little effort as possible.

All-In-One SEO Pack and Meta Data

Meta title and keywords

Start your meta title with your targeted keyword if possible. The same rules for the main title apply here with the exception of the purpose. The purpose of the meta title is to convince a searcher that the meta description below may lead to information that they are looking for. Keep your character count below 65 and closer to 60 if possible.

Meta description and keyword phrases

Start your meta description with your keywords as well but it does not have to be exact match. A slight variation of the target phrase is okay. The purpose of this part is to convince the search reading this listing that yes indeed their hunch is correct that this listing will lead them to an article or page that contains the full details of the answer they are searching for. Keep your character count below 160 and closer to 150 if possible.

Make sure you put a call to action at the end. The power of suggestion is strong so ending your meta descriptions with phrases like READ MORE… CLICK HERE… CONTINUE… increase the chances the searcher will follow the suggestion and click. Make sure these are in ALL CAPS similar to how I have shown you here.

Formatting for Optimization

How to use Bold

Bolding is something very easy to get wrong. Many people bold their keyword phrases excessively. The goal of bolding is to give readers who scan the content a specific message. If all a person does is scan your article they should get the sense of what it is about from looking at the title, headings and your bolds. Use bold to tell a story and highlight what the article or paragraph is about. Make it easy for scanners to skip reading your entire article if possible.

Italics

Italics can play a role in allowing your content to be scanned. The goal however is a little different. Use italics when you really want to get the reader to pay attention to something specific. Typically italicizing a word or phrase only helps those who have already committed to thoroughly reading the article or at least the paragraph the person is looking at.

Underline

Try to stay away from using underlined keywords. Most users on the web associate an underline with a click-able link. Even if you use an underline for in your subheadings you may still confuse someone into thinking they should click it to get more information.

Quotes

Do your best to use the quotation tag when you are quoting another website. Not only does it help readers know that it is not you saying it, but it gives a signal to search engines that you are not trying to claim this content as original. This can go a long way from keeping your article from getting penalized for containing duplicate content.

Optimizing Images For SEO

Title

A great source of traffic is Google Images. The other search engines index image as well. Making sure that you give your images a keyword descriptive title is important. Don’t stuff keywords and don’t use the same variations of keyword phrases as the rest of your content if possible. Keep it natural sounding.

Description

The description of your image is similar to the meta description. When someone is searching often times they may see an image in the search results or they might be specifically looking for images. Either way this is your chance to describe the content of your page and convince them to click through to your site. Describing your content is another way of saying that you should use your targeted keyword phrases in the description.

Alternative Text

Every screen reader program for the disabled relies on words to describe the image. Use a variation of your keywords in a way to actually describe what the image is and what it is for in a practical way.

I hound the serps like a mad man hourly. I see that only link buying sites have great rankings (over time) in almost every sector. I am obsessed with analytics and tracking sources of traffic which converts. Every example on Matt Cutt’s blog, except that of (spencer), seems to be an ideological debate rather than one based on the actual serps.

Topic: “Are financially incentivized links spam or not?”

Google wants people to create fun/interesting content and/or put nofollow on all their marketing efforts. What is a paid back link anyway? If the following link is a real interview with Matt, it seems to show he acknowledges that paying your way to the top of Digg is cool since the sites that pull content from Digg are linking consensually. http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-061608.shtml

Every form of site promotion is “paid” with time, money, favors or both. Matt even puts nofollow on the comments on his blog. Does that mean he paid for them? Did they earn the link by providing valuable content to Matt’s page? Only a few commenters on here are doing it to spam so why punish the honest commentators?

Why spammers keep spamming

People do what works. They try different techniques and ramp up and scale things that work. Everyone commenting on Matt’s blog seems to say that “spamming” is short lived. That is not the cold reality when you look at the serps for highly competitive search terms. The best a non spam site can get is lower first page in most cases. Google needs to crack down on paid spam if they really want to clean up the serps. They can’t take the brand of the site into consideration. If a powerful company is buying links then slap them too.

Why spam has not been stopped yet

The problem with that is most sites ranking well did all their spamming before Google took notice. Because they’ve accumulated thousands of links this way, Google has a hard time determining which links are paid and which are organic. Even if they disqualify 75% of the links the remaining ones are enough to dominate the serps. For that matter, Google doesn’t know what links are real or hacked. So what can Google really do about it? Are they going to go through 3 million links manually to figure out which are paid or not just to weed out one of millions of sites with spammy back links in high competitive industries? Impossible!

Will spam link building ever stop?

My opinion is that paid link buying will stay in practice until it stops becoming profitable. People follow their incentives and rationalize everything to justify their actions. I see obvious sidebar links, etc. all the time. When those are the “only” type of link a site has then you know it is benefiting them when they are ranking for competitive terms.

I sometimes contact the site owners and give them a link to the Google terms and they don’t care. The worst thing that can happen to the beneficiary of the link is that the link does not count for Google serps. If this were not true a competitor could link bomb any site with spam links to take them out of the serps game. The seller of the link my or may not suffer a penalty. There are a ton of other search engine’s that send real customers and traffic that end up making it worth it for many sites to buy links even when they are nofollowed. Nofollowing something makes only a small difference overall. A link is still advertising.

Conclusion of this post on SEO Spam

Once you get some income coming in, then start your long term SEO battle. Of course, optimize your site itself to make it worthy of ranking when the time comes. Start your split testing and analytics tracking in order to get the best converting design early. When the serp traffic comes you will be very happy you did. Did I mention exposure from normal paid advertising will accidentally bring you links also? By the way, link building for your site in the first few months (or year depending on competition) may be a not so cost effective task anyway. You may get more links early on through your efforts to develop a return on investment with regular marketing. In any event, betting your success on SEO is not a good bet. Hedge your bet with real marketing and when you hit the sweet spot then ramp up your external link building and SEO efforts to make a home run.

The fact is “all marketing affects your websites search engine position paid or not!”

Simply log into our Affiliate Dashboard and select the iTunes offer. After you’ve designed your custom link or creative within the dashboard, paste it into the first box below.

After that, open iTunes and choose your favorite selection. Right-click on the name of the song, album or artist and choose “copy link.” Paste that link into the second box below.

Press “Get Link” and copy your new creative code! You can even use URL shorteners to promote your favorite music on social networks.

As hopefully everyone is aware, the major search engines are going through some major updates to how they rank and display results. It is important that everyone on content and SEM teams stay on top of the latest techniques and tactics available to increase exposure. These techniques apply to business web properties, but if you are successful, you will learn techniques that will benefit any personal projects you may have.

We’ll investigate a few areas, and look into techniques that will really benefit your website for the year 2010.

Where to start: Branding

First, it is important to understand the purpose of using social networking from a branding standpoint. Joe Griffin of searchconcepts.com gave a nice synopsis of some of the main benefits in an interview for webpronews.com:

So, simply building profiles and linking to your site won’t help. If you’re interested in leveraging social media portals to improve your website’s rankings, then you need to look at the strategy in a completely different light. First and foremost, participating in the social web means building brand recognition, which can be used for your personal brand, your business brand, or both. It’s the brand recognition that leads to improved linking to your website – it’s not the social media websites themselves that will give your website link popularity. The inbound links will come from bloggers, forum moderators and users, resource websites, and new friends and colleagues that you will meet along the way.

Social networks build brands. Brand building is the key to top rankings over the long haul. Recent updates by Google, including the Vince update validate these comments.

Where Social Media Fits Into the SEO Equation – SEO Benefits of Twitter, Facebook, Etc.

Social Networking and SEO

While branding is important, the effects of actual direct link building cannot be underestimated by those participating in the social networks. Much has been said about Twitter “nofollowing” their links, but that is ignoring much of the residual impact of linking in Twitter. Search results pages aren’t “nofollowed”, and the myriad web scrapers on the internet scarcely bother to nofollow links.

An often overlooked aspect of Twitter et al., is the numerous third party services to rank, sort, categorize, and synopsize your profiles. Websites such as Twibs, Tweeple Pages, and Tweet Find allow you to not only build your brand, but you get honest to goodness “dofollow” links to your homepage and your Twitter profile. That’s like hitting two birds with one stone.

Real-Time Search

The latest word out of the search engines is “Real-Time Search”, AKA showing relevant search results from Twitter, Friendfeed, etc., at the top of the SERPs.

Search Engine Land has an interesting evaluation of the techniques every search engine marketer will want to be familiar with for the year 2010, including the following section on real-time search:

Get real with “real-time” results

The recent announcements of Bing and Google’s real-time data sources has led to uncertainty about the amount of “real-time” results that will be displayed across the engines in 2010. Brands that remain on the social media sidelines should reevaluate the impact of real-time results for their brand, products or services given that these data sources are being unleashed by Google and Bing on the search pages!

Bottom line: These deals increase the impact of social channels on SEO since the new streams will supply another layer of data relevance for the Bing and Google algorithms to crunch. Marketers will need to find out the optimal balance of social media participation that fits within their overall brand strategy and allows them to capitalize this new tactic for improving search visibility (example: Bing’s Twitter integration).

7 Ways To Conquer Natural Search When Google & Bing Face Off In 2010

An interesting read as regards to real-time search results is the article at Technology Review where Amit Singhal, the Lead Developer of real-time search at Google, discusses some of the factors that come into play in how “tweets” are ranked.

Bing, Cuil, and other search engines also provide various kinds of real-time results. Both Google and Bing have also forged major deals with Twitter to get real-time access to tweets, those 140-character microblog posts sent out by Twitter members. But Google claims to offer the most comprehensive real-time results by scanning news headlines, blogs, and feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other sources.

How Google Ranks Tweets – Algorithms judge the relevance of microblog posts containing 140 characters or less.

So, as we can see, social networking is important. The results might not be immediately measureable in the traditional ROI sense, but residual effects on your bottom line cannot be ignored if you are serious about getting noticed by the search engines.

Things that you should do

I’m not going to spend an immense amount of time explaining all of the reasoning behind these instructions, but you’re encouraged to investigate the reasons yourself, as it’s helpful to know the “why” behind certain concepts.

1. Set up and organize your accounts

Gmail is your lifesaver when it comes to social networking

This is going to be a life-long process, as there is always a new website to register on, so it’s recommended that you start with a simple Gmail account and register everything under that one email account. Make sure to keep records of all of your passwords and logins, because there is nothing more frustrating than having to hunt down that missing password or having to reset it. Whenever you get a chance to interlink your accounts, you are greatly encouraged to do so. Many sites give you an opportunity to link to your other profiles or even to your website, so don’t miss out on the connections.

It would be a full-time job posting unique, relevant content on all of the social networks, but if you choose to have your accounts mirror each other, such as having Twitter auto post to Facebook, make sure that you maintain a human presence on all of the “major” accounts.

2. Put the “Social” in Social Networking

It might be tempting to auto post your content from your main web property into all of your social profiles, but be warned that the results will be sub-optimal if that is your only strategy. Notice that the word “Social” comes first in the term Social Networking. Your best results will come from having actual human-to-human conversations. Auto-posting your latest articles isn’t a sin, just make sure that you follow up with real human interaction, otherwise you risk being “un-followed” or worse.

3. Communicate with your sources

This is the #1 concept to grasp, a concept that will bring immediate benefits to your content creation teams: Communicate with your sources.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Every writer uses sources when they create their content. Those sources are semantically related to your content, and thus highly relevant in the eyes of the search engines. By communicating with your sources, you create a mutually benefitial relationship with a separate web entity that will benefit you in numerous ways. Here are a few of the ways you can do this.

• Non-spammy Comments

  Immediately post a question if the article allows for comments, with a non-spammy profile link if they allow links to your homepage. This is about long-term benefits over short term gain, so do NOT put a link in the comment itself. Posting a link will get you red-flagged immediately in the minds of webmasters around the world. Asking a question signals “Human” and is a nice start to building a relationship.

  One strategy is to ask if you can link to their article as a resource. Writers have generous egos, so when your article IS completed, he/she will be happy to let you post your link into the comments section. If you’re lucky, they might reciprocate the love and link to your article too.

  Once you have built a reputation as a non-spammer, your ability to exchange links with said author increases dramatically, and this has immediate benefits to your backlinks. Let’s face the facts: This is what Google wants. Real, honest to goodness linking to relevant articles.

• Note the Social Profiles

  Many authors have a prominently displayed social profile link on their page. Or they have a “retweet” button, which often signals that they have a Twitter presence. Retweet their article, or better yet, write an original tweet concerning their article, making sure to put their @username into the tweet. Oh, and make sure to follow them. This is a good thing™, since once again, authors have generous egos and love followers (don’t we all?).

  Obviously, this is very Twitter oriented, but the principle applies to Facebook, etc., so be sure to keep your eyes open for opportunities to connect. The important thing gaining the attention of the actual person on the other end of the account, and letting them know that you are a real human and that you appreciated their article. Instant love ensues.

Conclusion

While your first reaction to social networking would be to try to get your users to directly convert, your time is better off spent using the social networks as a networking tool rather than a conversion tool.

What the search engines are spidering are networks, links and connections between relevant resources. It is through these networks that you will gain the most value because of the natural backlinks that you will acquire from the other authors and webmasters. Remember, it is the authors and the webmasters who are controlling the links, and it is these links that will directly affect your bottom line.

Visitor Engagement Goals

GA’s goal tracking ability just got a whole lot better with the introduction goal metrics using visitor pages per visit and visitor time on page. By measuring pages per visit and time on site as goals, GA users are better able to understand their website visitor engagement and branding efforts. And – goal limits have increased from 5 to 20 per profile.

Improved Mobile Reporting

GA users now have the ability to track and monitor mobile marketing efforts on both mobile websites and mobile applications, which include all web-enabled devices. And, for the first time, tracking is not limited to JavaScript enabled devices. This is great news for Android and iPhone developers who have previously not been able to accurately track separate ad campaign results.

Analytics Intelligence

What do you do with all the analytics data to actually improve your website? That is the question that GA’s new feature aims to answer. This feature will automatically deliver alerts based on metrics that it already knows to look for; saving you from having to dig through the data.

Already know what you need to look for? The Intelligence feature lets you set up custom alerts for any metrics and dimensions at the frequency range that you desire.

The update to GA also includes several improvements to custom filtering, custom variables, data segmenting, and sharing.

With the holiday season fully upon us, now is the perfect time to dive into your website analytics data to uncover visitor behavior trends that will allow you to improve your website user experience.

Murdoch Threatens Self Inflicted Bankruptcy (Image from Flickr.com)

In an attempt to counter this perception, Rupert Murdoch, head honcho of News Corp, the company that owns 20th Century Fox, The Sun and The Times in the UK, and popular websites Myspace and Hulu, is directing that all News Corp web properties will de-index their content from Google and is attempting to rally other news organizations in their boycott of Google.

Murdoch claims that Google’s indexing of news content is part of cause of the decline in revenue for news organizations and that shutting off the traffic from Google would not detrimentally affect their current revenue.

Of course, as a web marketing and SEO company, we think that there are some very important flaws in Murdoch’s understanding of the web world of today.

Our response to the article on this subject published on the internet news site Telegraph.co.uk.

Google allows websites to have their content indexed, all the while when a real visitor is there, they can restrict access without a login user name and password.

This login restriction can be restricted to registered and paid members if the site so chooses.

What he really wants is Google to cut him in on the advertising revenue. The only reason for this whole thing is to try to play hard ball with Google.

Likely they have tested the paid model and found that no one is willing to pay so they blame Google or at least are pretending to blame Google.

Google does buy exclusive content from news organizations. They have very high quality standards and exclusivity rules. Many times when you click a Google News listing you will go to Google hosted articles that have zero links going anywhere except back to Google News.

What large organization need to do is perfect their advertising model and give people more value to make it worth paying for. When you are reading a news article about sports cars the last thing someone is going to click on is a stupid weight loss ad that shows someones fat. I see this all the time.

You can’t have a disconnect between the topic of the article and the ad. You can’t have stupid ugly looking ads either. There is a way to filter all that if they are using Google Adsense.

Everyone knows that paying for advertising on a Cost Per Mil Impression (CPM) basis is a rip off. Well established news sites artificially inflate their page impression count all the time. This is fraud in my opinion. Ever wonder why they make you click so many extra clicks to get where you want to go? Why do their pages automatically refresh on a periodic basis? They should start advertising Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) ads if they want advertisers to pay top dollar.

In other words paying for ad space doesn’t work because they don’t bring advertisers real customers to the level that CPA can. CPA means advertisers only pay if the ad brings them a real paying customer.

What the current model is doing is allowing their site to display low converting ads that just waste space and everyone’s time. With a CPA basis the news sites would be forced to become conversion experts and they would start taking and interest in the effectiveness of the ads displayed on their site.

They are digging their own grave by not caring if the advertising on their site generates revenue for the advertisers. This is a simple case of incentives not being properly aligned. That is why we started our own CPA network where we allow all advertisers to upload ads for free and we only charge when they get a real customer. That way we naturally care whether their creatives get clicks as well as the advertisers website converting those clicks to revenue.

Nifty Fits:

A designer apparel E-store with hundreds of items for men and women from top brands at hugely discounted prices. Publishers will enjoy 5 % commission payouts on all orders! Shoppers browse designers like Armani, Burberry, Diesel, Dsquared, Fendi, Prada, and Gucci. Website features a “new arrivals” and “sale” section and is a high-converter for the holiday shopping season.

Choose your favorite creative and start promoting this offer today!

(Sign up here if you’re not yet a publisher on our network).

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Quote Wizard Auto Insurance:

Quote Wizard offers a quick and easy way to compare auto insurance quotes from the top agencies with just a few clicks. This extremely friendly and easy to use website is a high converter, and payouts are $10 per lead! Get started with a huge selection of creatives by logging into your Adworkz publisher account.

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Santa Mail

You’ve seen it on TV and heard about it from your friends. Now, you’ll earn $10 per conversion on the Santa Mail campaign! Who doesn’t want a personalized letter from Santa?

Letters are completely customizable and they are a breeze to create.

With many banners to choose from, the Santa Mail campaign is the perfect way to give your website that holiday feeling. And – Christmas delivery is guaranteed for customers who order on or before December 22.

Add this campaign to your promotional mix by logging into your account and selecting your desired creatives.

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Identity Lookout:

Identity Lookout is a leader in identity theft prevention services and is offering $40 per lead for signups on their 30 day trial service. This is a high converter year-round, and matches up well with most internet demographics. Login to your publisher account to get access to all of the available creatives and to start promoting this offer.

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We’ve added a few other offers in the educational and financial service categories, so be sure to check them out. You’ll need to be a publisher on our network first, but its free to sign up. If you’re not finding the right kinds of offers that you would like to promote on your site, drop us a note and we’ll try our best to find something that will work well for you.

SlideShare has been called the "YouTube" of PowerPoint. Their new tools venture into the area of lead generation and content promotion. (Photo: flickr.com)

Marketing your business’s content and generating leads are vital to the health of an E-commerce enterprise. This is why the new tools being introduced by San Francisco-based company SlideShare are exciting developments. LeadShare and AdShare are premium services that the document and presentation-sharing Web site hope will transform the fields of lead generation and content promotion into a more social media-style activity.

Connecting People

Traditional lead generation for business involves third-party vendors and multi-faceted campaigns where end users generally must input lead info to get the ball rolling. LeadShare takes a different approach by scanning documents and presentations uploaded to the SlideShare service. Businesses are then asked to share content to see whether end users are interested in making contact. The theory is that the quality of such leads will be high, as users are already searching for your company’s subject matter on SlideShare.

Customizable Lead Generation

Companies looking for lead generation through LeadShare can quickly determine how they can capture leads and how much data is required. Furthermore, companies can decide whether they want to capture leads directly from their listing on SlideShare or through an embed on their own Web site. Leads generated through LeadShare cost anywhere from $1 to $22, depending upon how much information the user is required to give. Thus, just capturing an E-mail address is on the low end of the scale at $1. Physical location and other additional information raises the cost of the lead.

Pay-Per-Click Promotion

AdShare, which is SlideShare’s new content promotion tool, consists of a special sponsorship box that is placed around a company’s content on SlideShare. Each time a user clicks on the link to view the company’s presentations and documents, the company pays $0.25 per click. The more that content is viewed, the greater promotion it receives. Conveniently, AdShare views can be connected to LeadShare lead generation and businesses can easily manage options for both services.

SlideShare Gets Views

According to the Web traffic analysis Web site Quantcast, SlideShare gets more than 20 million visits each month. With new features like LeadShare and AdShare, that share will only grow. Small businesses or independent entrepreneurs can benefit from the services. The social media-style interaction between business and user is a particularly advantageous way of capturing new business, considering that social media interaction currently marks businesses that stand among the vanguard of those that truly interact with customers.

Looking to Get Started With Lead Generation and Content Promotion?

We can help.

Adworkz is prepared to help your business find its competitive edge. From affiliate network promotion to organic lead management and delivery, we can help you perform beyond your expectations. If you want fresh, vibrant leads, consider us if you want to take the next step up from basic services sites like SlideShare offer.

Related Video:

FTC building image from Wikimedia.

For the first time since 1980, the Federal Trade Commission has updated the rules that regulate endorsements. If  you’ll recall, 1980 was long before the launch of the great World Wide Web.

Most of the updates regarding paid endorsements apply to bloggers, and social networking sites such as Twitter will also have be monitored to make sure they follow the new regulations. The Washington Post reports:

In the 1980 version of the Guides, advertisers were allowed to get away with promoting unusually positive or outlier experiences in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical.” Long overdue, the revised Guides no longer allow this form of safe harbor.

Full disclosure

The new FTC guidelines mostly focus on disclosure. The Washington Post reports that The Guides “now contain clear language and consequences associated with the use of paid testimonials in blogs and celebrity endorsements.” The new Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials apply to  consumers, experts, organizations and celebrities.

Besides stiffening regulations on the “anything goes — if you say results vary” formula, the Guides are more strict regarding disclosing connections between advertisers and endorsers.

Get informed about the Guides

The new Guides specify that product reviews by bloggers who get paid to do those reviews are endorsements. The rules also specify that payment doesn’t necessarily have to be cash. Free product is considered payment, so if a blogger reviewing a product received that product for free, that fact must be disclosed.

The length of the product review is irrelevant. If a company is paying for a 140-character post on Twitter, the same rules apply. The fines for breaking the rules in the Guides run up to $11,000, so brush up on the FTC Endorsement Guidelines to make sure you don’t end up in hot water.

You are the master of your Facebook page

Now there is no need to panic if you use your Facebook page, Twitter account or other social networking sites to talk about products, brands and companies you like. These rules only apply to paid endorsements, so unless Starbucks is paying you to market for them online, it’s OK to write about how much you enjoyed your latte or what pastry you’re craving at the moment.

Simply put, the FTC is aiming to make sure that when people are given free products or money to write something about a company, consumers should know. Beyond that, if you are being paid to write an endorsement, don’t write lies. As long as you follow those two basic guidelines, you should easily be able to avoid fines from the FTC.

Image from picasa.

Tuesday a new, revamped version of Trapster is coming out, and it does a lot more than just warn drivers of the presence of speed traps, cameras and popular cop hangouts. CNET says the new version of Trapster features an improved interface, Bluetooth audio, built-in iPod controls, rotating maps and a real-time traffic map.

The new interface includes a row of icons down the right side for easy tapping access to features. The Bluetooth audio feature allows users to pair Trapster with their car speakers and get audio alerts. Pretty snazzy, and safer than staring at your smartphone while you’re driving. The iPod controls let you access your music.

The real Trapster treats

I think the coolest new Trapster features are the rotating map and the traffic map. The rotating map shows your position, and it rotates depending on which direction you’re traveling, so there’s no mind-bending for us directionally challenged people.

I am not much of a speeder, but I would definitely get Trapster just for the traffic maps. The traffic map shows areas in real time so you can see what the traffic is like. How great would it be to be able to avoid yucky traffic? I could have definitely used that feature when I lived in Portland, where rush hour takes up about seven hours throughout the day.

Trapster is free!

For those of you who didn’t already know, this amazing app that people would probably pay big bucks for is free. I think Trapster developer Pete Tenereillo really missed out on a fortune by not charging for this app. I know people who have paid hundreds for radar detectors.

What’s that you say? Radar detectors are illegal? Oh, well, I didn’t know them that well. Speaking of illegally detecting radar, Trapster has, of course, seen its fair share of controversy. After all, Trapster does help people break the law. Sure, it does lots of other stuff too, but we all know most users probably keep Trapster turned on so they can speed worry free.

More Trapster features

Speaking of that other stuff, Trapster users can log trip data and share it on Facebook and Twitter. I recommend users who take advantage of this feature make sure their profiles are set to private, otherwise that could be an abduction waiting to happen.

Also, you might want to include, just to be safe, in your travel tweets that you have a burly body guard and a ferocious dog with you.