.

The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:13:00 +0000

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates.

I’m very excited to announce that the new version of Google Analytics is now available to all Google Analytics users in all languages. When you sign into Google Analytics you’ll see a link to the new version in the top right of your account.

If you haven’t, we encourage you to try the new version today. There’s a host of new featuresto help you do better analysis. We’re also constantly making updates to the new version.

Here’s a five things to try in Google Analytics v5:

Create an additional dashboard to focus on your important metrics
Set up an Event Goal to track interactions like downloads and video engagement
Graph and compare any two rows over time with Plot Rows
Check out your favorite report (Did it move? Our Report Finder can help)
Flip between your different profiles and sites while staying focused on the same report

So what happens next? You’ll continue to have access to both versions of Google Analytics, and you can switch between them at any time. If you find anything that doesn’t work or could be better, let us know. We especially want to hear about issues that force you back to the current version. We’re still hard at work on enabling a few features from the old version including PDF export and email scheduling, and they’ll be coming soon.

Take some time this week to try the new Google Analytics, and let us know what you think. We’ll continue making improvements and adding functionality. Next week, we’ll be covering how to use custom reports in the new version.

250+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:12:00 +0000

Prepare your fingers, and throw your mouse away: you’re not going to need it. For your weekend reading, we’ve prepared a list of the most useful keyboard shortcuts for our favorite web services. So, if you need a quick reference as to which key does what on what site, this is where you find it. Enjoy!

Gmail

c – compose a new mail
/ – puts your cursor in the search box
k – move to newer conversation
j – Move to older conversation
n – next message
p – previous message
o or Enter – open a conversation
u – return to conversation list
y – archive a conversation
m – mute (archive and make all future messages from this conversation skip the inbox)
x – select conversation
s – star a message or conversation
! – report spam
r – reply to a mail
a – reply to all recepients
f – forward message
Esc – escape from input field
ctrl+s – save draft
key combos
tab then Enter – send message
y then o – archive your conversation and move to the next one.
g then a – go to all mail
g then s – go to starred conversations
g then c – go to contacts list.
g then d – go to drafts
g then i – go to inbox
Official list of Gmail shortcuts

Google Reader

j/k – selects the next/previous item in the list
space/shift-space – moves the page down/up
n/p – in list view, selects the next item without opening it
o – in list view, expands or collapses the selected item
enter – in list view, expands or collapses the selected item
s – stars the selected item
shift-s – shares the selected item
m – switches the read state of the selected item
t – opens the tagging field for the selected item
v – opens the original source for this article in a new window
shift-a – marks all items in the current view as read
1 – displays the subscription as expanded items
2 – displays the subscription as a list of headlines
r – refreshes the unread counts in the navigation
shift-n/p – selects the next/previous subscription or folder in the navigation
shift-x – expand or collapse a folder selected in the navigation
shift-o – opens the item currently selected in the navigation
gh – goes to the Google Reader homepage
ga – goes to the “All items” view
gs – goes to the “Starred items” view
gt – allows you to navigate to a tag by entering the tag name
gu – allows you to navigate to a subscription by entering the subscription name
u – hides and shows the list of subscriptions
? – displays a quick guide to all of Reader’s shortcuts
Official list of Google Reader shortcuts

Google Calendar

calendar view
c – Allows you to create a new event. + c allows you to create an event in a new window.
/ – Places your cursor in the search box
p – Moves your calendar view to the previous date range
n – Moves your calendar view to the next date range
t – Moves you to the current day
d – Displays your calendar in the “Day” view
x – Displays your calendar in a customized view
w – Displays your calendar in the “Week” view
m – Displays your calendar in the “Month” view
a – Displays your calendar in the “Agenda” view
q – Opens “Quick Add”
Esc – Brings you back to the default calendar view
event view
Enter – Expands a collapsed region
Tab – Moves your cursor to the next field
Alt then s – Saves the event
Esc – Brings you back to the default calendar view
Official list of Google Calendar shortcuts

Google Maps

arrow keys – pan the map in various directions
page up, page down, home and end – pan out even wider
+/- – zoom in/out
Official list of Google Maps shortcuts

Google Video

space bar – play/pause
right/left arrow skip -jump back 5%
up/down arrow – increase/decrease the volume 5%
m – mute
f – toggle full screen
Esc – return from full screen to normal mode
Official list of Google Video shortcuts

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Ctrl+B – bold
Ctrl+C – copy
Ctrl+I – italicize
Ctrl+P – print
Ctrl+S – save
Ctrl+U – underline
Ctrl+V – paste
Ctrl+X – cut
Ctrl+Y – redo
Ctrl+Z – undo
Shift+Tab – move to previous cell/row
Tab – move to next cell/row
The above are only the shortcuts which work in both docs and spreadsheets. For a full list of all keyboard shortcuts in these two apps, see below.
Official list of Google Docs & Spreadsheets shortcuts

Netvibes

main panel
h – show help
arrow keys – navigate through modules
e – edit module
d – delete module
p – publish module
Enter – perform action on module (depending on the module, it can be open feed, start typing, etc)
Esc – removes focus from current module
a – add content to your Netvibes page
j and k – navigate through tabs
tabs shortcuts
t then o – opens tab options
t then 1,2,3,4 – sets the number of columns to 1,2,3 or 4 in the current tab
t then r – rename tab
t then d – delete tab
content panel
h – show help
a – add new feed
b – go to Netvibes ecosystem
t – close the content panel
feed reader
h – show help
n – next item
p – previous items
a – mark all as read
u – mark all as unread
Esc – close feed reader
Official list of Netvibes shortcuts

Wikipedia

+ – add a new section (talk pages only)
. – opens your user page if logged in
= – protect/unprotect the current page (sysops only)
c – shows the content page associated with the current article
d – delete/undelete the current page (sysops only)
e – edit this page/show source of current page
f – search Wikipedia
h – current page’s history
j – shows all of the pages that link to the current one
k – shows recent changes in pages linked to the current one
l – opens your watchlist (logged – in users only)
m – move the current page and its talk page (non – move – protected pages only)
n – opens your user’s or IP’s talk page
p – shows a preview of your changes (on edit pages)
q – shows a list of all special pages
r – shows a list of recent changes to the Wikipedia
s – saves the changes that you have made (on edit pages)
t – opens the current article’s talk page
u – allows you to upload images or media files
v – shows what changes you made to the text (on edit pages)
w – adds the current page to your watchlist (logged – in users only)
x – loads a random article
y – opens a list of your user’s or IP’s contributions
z – goes to the Main Page
Official list of Wikipedia shortcuts

Blogger

(these shortcuts work when editing posts)
control + b – Bold
control + i – Italic
control + l – Blockquote (when in HTML – mode only)
control + z – Undo
control + y – Redo
control + shift + a – Link
control + shift + p – Preview
control + d – Save as Draft
control + p – Publish Post
control + s – Autosave and keep editing
control + g – Hindi transliteration
Official list of Blogger shortcuts

Remember the Milk

t – Add a new item to the current list
c – Complete the selected task/s
p – Postpone the selected task/s by one day if they have a due date
d – Change the due date of the selected task
f – Change the repeat of the selected task
g – Change the time estimate of the selected task
s – Change the tags for the selected task
u – Change the URL for the selected task
l – Change the location for the selected task
y – Add a note to the selected task
r – Rename the selected item
z – Undo the last action
1 – Set the priority of the selected task/s to 1
2 – Set the priority of the selected task/s to 2
3 – Set the priority of the selected task/s to 3
4 – Set the selected task/s to have no priority
Del – Delete the currently selected task(s)
a – Select all items in the current list
n – Select none of the items in the current list
k – When on a list, move the cursor up
j – When on a list, move the cursor down
i – When on a list, select an item
h – Switch between tabs (e.g. Task and Notes)
m – Toggle multi – edit mode on or off (default is off)
Tab – Save input and move to the next input field
Esc – Remove the cursor from the current input field
Key Combos
Ctrl + Shift + / – Moves the cursor to the search box
Ctrl + Shift + 6 – Switch to the Overview screen
Ctrl + Shift + 7 – Switch to the Tasks screen
Ctrl + Shift + 8 – Switch to the Locations screen
Ctrl + Shift + 9 – Switch to the Contacts screen
Ctrl + Shift + 0 – Switch to the Settings screen
Ctrl + Shift + Right – Switch between tabs (e.g. move to the next list)
Ctrl + Shift + Left – Switch between tabs (e.g. move to the previous list)
Ctrl + Shift + l – Skip to Login screen (from homepage)
Locations Shortcuts
Arrow Keys – pan/move around the map
Page Up, Page Dn, Home, End – Pan – Move around the map, wider pan than arrow keys
+/- – Zoom In/Out
Ctrl + Shift + l – Moves the cursor to the location ‘go’ box

What is Search Engine Marketing SEM?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 09:19:00 +0000

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the overall process of combining the two processes of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

While the results of successful SEO and PPC appear on the same page of search engine results, the underlying processes to get each result there are quite different to each other.

SEO has strengths where PPC does not, and vice versa. Combining the strengths of each is why the two processes are so powerful when used together. In a perfect world, your new or existing web site would immediately get a lot of free/cheap, relevant search engine traffic.

Let's look at the strengths of each in attaining this perfect world scenario:

1. Rate of increase in web site traffic over time

PPC = Fast
SEO = Much slower

Traffic to your web site from SEO takes anywhere from 3 to 18 months to ramp up, but PPC traffic can be gained in a matter of hours, days or weeks, depending on how extensive a campaign is setup.

2. The cost-per-visitor to the web site

SEO = Lower
PPC = Higher

The cost per web site visitor for PPC will tend to be higher than it is for SEO because you pay for every click on your PPC text ads, but you don't pay when one of your organic search engine results (left-hand, SEO-induced) is clicked on, although there is the time and effort involved with attaining the SEO rankings in the first place.

3. Information about the most effective search phrases

PPC = Very useful
SEO = Less useful

Owing to the fact you can pretty much bid on any search phrase you like with PPC, you are able to test different search phrases to determine which are the most effective for your business.

It is more difficult to precisely target search phrases with SEO, so PPC is very useful for making decisions on what the most effective search phrases for your business are, which you can then SEO your web site for.

4. Amount of clicks each type of result gets

SEO = High
PPC = Lower

Organic search engine results (left-hand, SEO-induced) get far more clicks from searchers than the PPC text ads (right-hand), owing to where they are on the page. More clicks equals more traffic, customers and profit!

Imagine what it is like once the SEO and PPC efforts start to mature and your web site is ranked high on the 1st page of Google with both a natural (left-hand, SEO-induced) search engine result and with a Google AdWords text ad (right-hand, PPC) for the same search phrase! This is quite possible and has been done for many of 1stPageProphets' own clients.

1stPageProphets has achieved excellent SEM results for our clients using its methodology PFSEM^TM. Please contact us now so we can help you understand how much time and effort it will require to get similar results for your own web site. Don't delay because our next month's new client work schedule is filling fast.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as the resource box below remains intact (including the hyperlink) with the article.

127 New Dimensions And Metrics Available In The API

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:29:00 +0000

One of our aims of the Google Analytics Data Export API is to provide access to all the data you find in our reporting UI. To that end, we are releasing 127 new dimensions and metrics via the API today!

Some of the powerful new data points are:

Unique visitors - ga:visitors metric has been updated to support the true number of unique visitors for any date range (instead of the daily unique visitors). It also supports significantly more valid combinations.
Organic Searches - The number of organic searches within a session.
10 new Adwords dimensions - Including Matched Query (what people searched for, not the bid term) and Placement Domain (which site you content ads were running on).
Search Result Views - The number of times a search result page was viewed.
3 Time dimensions - To simplify plotting graphs.

We also included 111 calculated metrics to make it easy to query most common calculations in the reports, such as bounce rate, cost per conversion, and margin. Now, getting calculated metrics is both more convenient and in parity with the calculated metrics in the UI.

You can see a complete list of the new dimensions and metrics in our public changelog.

With all these dimensions and metrics, it can be time consuming to find the values you are looking for. To simplify this, we’re also launching a new interactive dimension and metric search tool. You can use this interactive tool to search for a dimension or metric using itssearch-as you-type feature. Even more exciting is the ability to easily determine valid dimension-metric combinations just by selecting the dimensions/metrics that you want to request. Here's a screenshot:

We hope that you will find this new tool and additional data useful. As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback, in our developer group.

Posted by Jeetendra Soneja and Ivanna Kartarahardja, Google Analytics API team

14 Free SEO Tools and Resources from SEOmoz

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:27:00 +0000

ust updated their site with a new design, as well as some new resources. Here are the best SEO resources offered by SEOmoz without having to be a PRO member. Simply sign up for a free account and take advantage of the following resources.

Free SEOmoz Tools

There is nothing more important to someone in SEO and Internet marketing than a strong toolset. Here are the best free tools that SEOmoz has to offer.

Free Link Building and Competitive Analysis Tools

First, let’s start with free tools for link building research and competitor analysis.
Open Site Explorer
Open Site Explorer allows you to analyze the first 1,000 backlinks of any domain. For the top 20, you can see more advanced metrics, such as the anchor text used to link to the domain and the page / site authority. You can sort the backlinks to show only followed, 301, or nofollowed links, as well as links from all pages, external or internal pages, and links to a specific page, the subdomain, or the entire domain.
You will also be able to see the top 20 linked to pages on the domain, the top 20 highest authority domains linking to the queried domain, the top 20 most used anchor text, and other link metrics. You can run an unlimited amount of reports daily.

Also available is a comparison report of two URLs so you can see the overall metrics for both as well as the top 20 incoming link domains side to side.

mozBar
The mozBar is a free SEO toolbar for Firefox. It shows you the number of incoming links for the page / domain you are on, as well as offers a toggle for highlighting nofollow links.

You can also Analyze Page, which shows you various metrics such as total links, page element analysis (title, meta description, and header tags), and page attributes (load time, ip address, and on-page internal and external outgoing links.

Trifecta
Trifeca measures the strength and popularity of a domain. Free members can run one Trifecta report daily. It looks at data such as the PageRank of the homepage and the top 10 pages on the domain, DMOZ links, Google News mentions, Compete rank, Alexa rank, Yahoo Site Explorer backlinks, and other statistics, each with a link to the original source of information.
This tool also provides a list of resources to help you improve your score, based on the areas you need improvement in, such as basic SEO, web design, and traffic generation.
Historical PageRank Checker
Want to know if a domain is getting stronger or weaker? The Historical PageRank Checker shows the PageRank history of a domain going back at least 3 years.
SEOmoz API
The SEOmoz free API allows you to pull a limited number of domain metrics into your applications, with attribution back to SEOmoz.
Top 500 Site
If you’re interested in what it takes to be one of the top sites on the Internet based on domain authority and links, check out the top 500 sites and, even more interesting, the top 500 pages.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Although there are more tools for Pro members, they do provide some useful tools for free use.
Term Extractor
The Term Extractor shows a breakdown of 1 – 3 word terms that a page is focused on, as well as the HTML tags these terms appear in.

Term Targeting
Term Targeting will look at your domain and a specific keyword, and grade your site on it’s keyword optimization. You can run this free report once daily.

This report can be used to not only measure your own site’s optimization, but to look at what other sites have done for on-site optimization of a keyword as well.

On-Site Optimization Tools

Want to analyze some on-site optimization factors? These tools will help you out.
Crawl Test
The Crawl Test will analyze the accessibility of your site as seen by search engines, alerting you to any possible problems that would affect caching and rankings. Free members can run this tool once daily.

The Boneyard

Last but not least are the tools that maybe replaced by newer tools being developed in the labs in the future. But they still have some great information to give in the meantime.
Geo Targeting
Geo Targeting allows you to enter a website, name, and location for a particular business to see if it is locally optimized. It checks to see if the address of the business is located on the site, and also checks local search results from Google, Yahoo, and Bing as well as giving you the link to add your business to local listings if it is not already there.
Popular Searches
The Popular Searches page shows the current top search terms across a variety of network, including Technorati, Delicious, Flickr, Google, Amazon, eBay, Lycos, Ask, and AOL.
Link Acquisition Assistant
The Link Acquisition Assistant allows you to enter your website, industry, and location, competitor URLs, and keywords to see search queries you can use to acquire new links for particular keywords.
These queries will help you find general directories, links that your competitors have, and links that you might be able to get. One of the best ones is finding brand mentions not linked to your website using this search string: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=keyword+-linkdomain%3Ayourdomain.com&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8 for Yahoo Site Explorer (one that will hopefully stick around).
Indexed Pages
Check the number of Indexed Pages in Google and Bing for a particular domain.

What Is PPC, CPC & Paid Search Marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.

Some people also refer to paid search as SEM, through here at Search Engine Land, we consider SEM (search engine marketing) to be an umbrella term that encompasses both paid search and SEO (search engine optimization).
Advice For Newbies
New to paid search ads? Don’t worry! Search Engine Land has the perfect series for you: PPC Academy. This special column began in 2010 and provides a different installment each week to bring you up to speed on paid search.
Another starting place is Google’s “Insider’s Guide To AdWords,” which you’ll find here in PDF format. AdWords is by many measures the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers, so the guide offers a useful introduction.
Of course, there’s much more to paid search than what’s covered in Google’s guide. You might consider some of the many print books out there with advice. Here’s our review of some newer books: A Roundup Of Best Search Advertising Books.
Advice At Search Engine Land
Here at Search Engine Land, we provide paid search advertising information and news in a variety of ways:
How To: Paid Search is our section that is devoted to practical tips and tactics about paid search ads.
Paid Search is Search Engine Land’s column that covers different paid search topics every week.
More Search Engine Land Columns – Beyond our Paid Search column, Search Engine Land also has these columns that cover paid search topics:

Search Ads Library Archives: This area of Search Engine Land provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of paid search. We also have subcategories, including:

In addition to covering paid search generally, Search Engine Land also has paid search areas specifically for each of the major search engines:

Remember, those with Search Engine Land memberships also have access to a wide-range of video content about paid search recorded at our SMX: Search Marketing Expo conferences. Our Search Marketing Now webinar site also has PPC / Paid Search presentations available on demand, to anyone, for free.
Continuing Advice & News
There are a number of blogs and forums that focus heavily on SEO topics, including: aimClear, bg Theory, Bruce Clay Blog, ClickEquations, Efficient Frontier Insights, PPC Blog, PPC Hero, Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Traffick, WebProNews and WebmasterWorld.
Looking for an easy-to-scan compilation of paid search news? Check out Alltop. For compilations of the best articles on paid search in a given year, visit The Semmys. At Search Engine Roundtable, you’ll discover a regular compilation of important discussions happening on a variety of search marketing forums.
Don’t forget to get our free SearchCap newsletter! SearchCap has a recap of all the day’s paid search news from sources all over the web, as well as the day’s news from Search Engine Land and from Search Engine Land’s related social news site, Sphinn.

Samsung Touch Screen Camera ST95 Price & Specs India

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:22:00 +0000

Samsung ST95 Digital Camera with 16 Megapixel sensor, 3″ Touchscreen, 26mm Wide, 5X Zoom with attractive price is available now in India.

Samsung ST95 Touch Screen Camera Specifications:

Color : Black & Silver
Camera : 16 MP (1/2.3″ CCD sensor)
Zoom : 5x Wide (35mm equivalent)
Touch Screen : 3.0″ LCD with Smart Touch 3.0 UI
Video Recording : 720p HD video (H.264)
Modes : 16 landscape and portrait modes
Support : USB 2.0, SD/SDHC Memory Card
Battery : Lithium-ion rechargeable battery

Other Features : 17mm Thick, Smart Auto 2.0, Smart Filter, Smart Album
Samsung Touch Screen Camera – ST95 Price in India: Rs.10,000/- (Approx..) and It will be made available in February’11

Google Nexus S Survived in Outer Space

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:18:00 +0000

has reached the skies! Wondering how? Google launched their Nexus Mobile into space @ 60,000 ft to test the outer limits.

The so called Android astronauts were strapped to 7 payloads, which each contained a mobile and sent into Earth’s outer atmosphere using weather balloons. The phone was still functioning at the height of 60,000ft.

(Captain) Zi Wang from Google Android said: ‘We wanted an opportunity to collect some interesting data about the sensors in Nexus S – GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer.’

Amazingly the Nexus S Cell Phone could even withstand temperatures as low as -50 degrees Celsius, while the GPS kept track of the phone up to 60,000ft and started working again on the balloon’s descent.

The balloons reached heights of over 100,000ft and traveled at up to 139mph at the top of their flight. They were equipped with still and video cameras and footage published on Wednesday shows the moment when the helium-filled balloons popped and the plucky Android astronauts plummeted back to Earth.

Incoming search terms:

How to Install WordPress Using XAMPP on Linux Server?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:12:00 +0000

We previously posted an article about Installing Wamp server on Windows. And now, we’re going to discuss How to Install WordPress on Linux Server Using XAMPP?

First of all, Download the Xampp Server in Linux system.

Extract it into /opt folder in your system files. To do it using the terminal, type the following command

sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.3a.tar.gz -C /opt

Once the Xampp is installed on your system, you should start a local server to facilitate the working. For that, type the following command in terminal

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Now, its the time for testing. Type the URL http://localhost/ and check whether you get a welcome message of Xampp.

After the Xampp is installed on your linux, you need to download the WordPress Stable build fromWordPress.org.

Extract the downloaded file into /opt/lampp/htdocs/ folder

Now, we require a Database for our wordpress site. You can create a Database by navigating to http://localhost/phpmyadmin

Remember to change the wp-config.php file permissions to avoid extra work. To let it give read-write permission to the WordPress folder inside /htdocs, Type the following terminal command for the same.

sudo chmod a+rw /opt/lampp/htdocs/wordpress/ -R

And now, navigate to the wordpress site – http://localhost/wordpress/ and provide the information related to WordPress database name that you created in the above step. Note that the username should be root and the password field can be left empty.

Next, provide the username and other info in the further steps to access your wordpress site.

Isn’t that easy? The WordPress installation might differ from Windows to Linux, but administering the WordPress Dashboard is the same with both the Operating systems.

A Twitter Exercise to Get More Followers

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:11:00 +0000

I’ll be the first too admit it, I started using Twitter as a one-way communication tool, so that I could help promote my content. However I quickly learned that by doing that, I would not be able to build the following and relationships that I wanted on Twitter.
So I developed an excise, that I think will help everyone develop a larger following and better relationships online.

Step 1: Create Multiple Keyword Monitoring Columns

Monitor Keywords: Start monitoring keywords that are relevant to your industry. This will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your industry and also find new people in your industry that are outside your inner Twitter circle.

Look for People Asking Questions: Either using your twitter client or by using search.twitter.com you can monitor questions people are asking on Twitter. Just put your “keyword ?”, make sure you put a space between the keyword on the question mark.

Step 2: Reach Out to 10 New People a Day

After you have setup your columns in your Twitter client, you can start reaching out to new people that you have never engaged with. Spend 20 minutes a day and @ reply to people who tweet about things that interest you. Also monitor the questions people are asking and try to provide answers.
If you are able to engage with 10 new people a day, that will equal over 3,500 new people that you engaged with a year, broadening your circle of current twitter friends.

Step 3: 5:1 @Reply Ratio

Instead of always tweeting out your own content and what YOU are doing, try @replying or mentioning other people. Recently I have tried to make it an effort of keeping a ratio of mentioning or replying to someone 5:1. So for every time you tweet something about yourself of that promotes your content, tweet 5 times that mention other people in the Tweetersphere.
If you haven’t already checked it out, make sure you check out the 100 Twitter Follower you MUST followpost.

Top 5 Facebook Advertising Tips

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:10:00 +0000

Facebook is becoming an outstanding way to drive massive amounts of traffic for extremely low CPC or CPM. I would not say that I am an expert in Facebook Ads, but I have run a number of campaigns and have gone through a number of FB Ad training courses.

Based on my experience and what I have learned, here are the main points I have gathered.

Targeting Options

One of the main benefits of using Facebook Ads compared to Google Adwords are the targeting options. Take advantage of being able to refine your ads by Age, Demographics, Likes/Dislikes, Employer, Sex, etc… Try using a service like Quantcast.com to help you find what type of demographic a website appeals to and use that in your Facebook targeting.

Bidding Strategy

Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook gives you the option of either Cost Per Click or Click Per 1000 Impressions (CPM). There are a few bidding strategies that you should be aware of to maximize your ROI.

1. Start with CPC: By starting with a cost-per-click model, you can continue to refine your campaign and ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad. If you started with a CPM model, you would be paying every 1000 impressions, regardless of how effective or how many clicks you receive.

2. Switch to CPM: After you have spend time refining your campaigns (adjusting bids, ad copy, images) and you are getting a high CPC, you should then switch it over to CPM. This way your spend will go way down and your traffic will stay high.

3. Crank Up Your Spend: Once you have a campaign dialed in and you are making money, its time to crank up your ad spend. If you can make $2 for every $1 you spend, there is no reasons that you should increase your spend way up to maximize profits!

Ad Copy

REMEMBER: The most important aspect of your Facebook ads are the images. The image has about 75% bearing on whether or not the user clicks on your ad. Make sure you test multiple ad images as well as different types of images. This can include Stock vs Amateur images, Female vs Male, different ages, etc….

In terms of your headline, asking questions always seem to do very well. Asking a relevant question, spikes peoples interests and gets their attention. In the body if you can tell them that you have a solution to their problem; these types of ads seem to do very well.

Landing Page Concepts

It is important to realize that even though you can drive a lot of traffic via Facebook Ads, that doesn’t mean that people are ready to buy. Generally when people are on Facebook, they are not there to shop.

When you create your landing page, MOST of the time, you will see better results if you send them to a lead generation page that is a free offer. If you try to directly sell them something, your results will suffer. If you entice the user to give an email address with a contest, offer or free piece of content, you can follow up with them with an email marketing campaign later.

Analyze, Refine….Analyze, Refine

Saving the best for last is analyzing your campaigns. After you have been running your ad campaigns for a little while and have some data, you want to analyze that data to see how you can further target your campaign.

Things to Analyze:

CTR
Clicks by Age Bucket
Clicks by Demographic
Ads by Purchase/Leads
Summary of Likes/Dislikes by Purchase/Lead
Also make sure you are not only testing ad images, but AD COPY. Start with images, then use the winning few images and start testing ad copy.

Change The Algorithm Has Been Launched

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 06:02:00 +0000

Just wanted to give a quick update on something I mentioned in my message spam the search engines.

My message said that "we evaluated a number of changes that should help drive an even lower level of spam, including an amendment, especially as regards the areas in which to copy the contents of other sites and original content is low . This change has been approved for the launch of a quality weekly meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.

It was a pretty targeted launch with just over 2% of requests for change, one way or another, but less than half percent of the search results changed enough that anyone can really felt. The net effect is that the applicant is more likely to see the sites, who wrote the original content instead of a site that scraped or copy the contents of the original Web site.

Thank you to Jeff Atwood and team stack overflow to provide feedback to Google on this topic. I mentioned to update Hacker News also because the people had spoken on this website specific queries.

Is it Now Facebook v Google v Groupon?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO FUEL) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:36:00 +0000

It seems that the powers that be at Facebook have decided that anything Google can do they can do better, with the social networking website outlining plans to enter into the emerging social buying market.

Earlier this month, Google revealed that it was set to go head-to-head with Groupon, the most successful firm in the sector, and now it looks like Facebook has decided to turn proceedings into what wrestling fans would probably call a triple threat match.

It’s a move that certainly seems to make sense – social buying is all about linking people with similar tastes and then getting them to buy into a special offer with a local company. As anyone who has used Facebook will know, the format of the site invites people to submit as much information as they want, so from a data and user point of view Mark Zuckerburg’s firm certainly seems to have a solid base.

People seem to like it too. Forbes recently reported that Deb Liu, Facebook’s head of commerce product marketing, had revealed that half of test users chose to share news of a purchase with friends via their news feeds.
That said, the “Buy With Friends” feature won’t start life as a direct competitor to Groupon. Instead, it will focus on social gaming and virtual goods via the credits system which is to be introduced soon. Still it seems unthinkable that, if it proved to be a success, Facebook wouldn’t expand it to include real-life goods and services.

However, the move into full on social buying isn’t guaranteed to be as smooth as one may imagine, with the issue of advertising looking like a potential stumbling block. Anyone who has used the social networking site in recent months will have no doubt noticed a significant number of Groupon banners brightening up the place, but would the two firms still want to carry on this relationship if they became director competitors?

Indeed, would other firms get the hump if Buy With Friends started offering discounts for real-world goods and services? After all, why would a mobile phone company want to stump up for a banner ad if a user’s news feed was packed with special offers telling them how to get the same phone for less with one of its rivals?

Facebook could be a serious contender in the social buying market, but unless it goes about things carefully the company could end up losing an awful lot of friends.