Our reading list for Friday, February 3, 2012

1. Hitwise: Facebook.com Now Accounts For 1 In Every 5 US Pageviews – TechCrunch
2. Can The Huffington Post Reinvent Cable News? – Mashable
3. Recent Findings On Captcha & The User Experience – Search Engine Land
4. Google Chrome Market Share Drops For First Time In Two Years – TechCrunch
5. Solving the Mystery of Google’s Q4 CPC Drop – ClickZ

Our reading list for Thursday, February 2, 2012

1. comScore: As U.S. Smartphone Usage Grows, Android Nears 50 Percent Market Share – TechCrunch
2. Google & Bing: We’re Not Involved In “Local Paid Inclusion” – Danny Sullivan
3. Facebook S-1 Nearly Crashes SEC Website – WSJ
4. Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery – AllThingsD
5. Amazon Launches Sports Collectibles Store Offering Sought-After Memorabilia From Athletes of the Past and Present.

Our reading list for Wednesday, February 1, 2012

1. Super Bowl ad packages for live stream ranging between $500,000 to over $1MM  – ClickZ
2. Facebook Picks Morgan Stanley to Lead $5 billion IPO – Bloomberg
3. IE 9 Growing Fast on Windows 7 PCs – Mashable
4. Analyst: Google+ Hits 100 Million Users – Mashable
5. Nation’s top football recruit Green-Beckham commits to Mizzou – USATODAY

Our reading list for Tuesday, January 31, 2012

1. In IPO, can Facebook debut strong and keep up the momentum? – Washington Post
2. Seinfeld and Soup Nazi … and other SuperBowl ads – Mashable
3. NBC Plans ‘Second Screen’ Experience for Free Super Bowl Web Stream – AllThingsD
4. Twitter is ‘Growing Faster Than We Have Ever Grown Before” – TechCrunch
5. ComScore: Facebook’s Share of Display Ads Reaches 28% – ClickZ

Our reading list for Monday, January 30, 2012

1. The Obama Campaign Is Now Using Mobile Payments Device Square For Fundraising – TechCrunch
2. How to Harmonize Google+ With Your Other Social Platforms - Search Engine Watch
3. Facebook testing photo display that puts captions and comments to the right of the image rather than below – Inside FaceBook
4. Email Giants Move to Slash ‘Phishing’ – WSJ.com
5. Our weekly Search Engine Marketing Reading List – Group 3 Solutions

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Friday, January 27, 2012

1. NYTimes.com: Fake reviews are drawing the attention of regulators
2. Google Spent Nearly $2 Billion On 79 Acquisitions In 2011 – TechCrunch
3. How Brands Can Manage Facebook Comment Overload – Mashable
4. Danny Sullivan: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You (Google) Care About Search
5. Google Opens Google+ to Teens – PCMag.com

Thursday, January 26, 2012

1. Facebook ‘subscribe’ for journalists may prevent Google+ from gaining traction as a source for news. Inside FB
2. Test Your Sitemaps Before Submitting Them To Google – Search Engine Land
3. Coca-Cola Polar Bears Will Watch, React to Super Bowl in Real Time – Mashable
4. December 2011: Top U.S. Online Video Destinations – Nielsen Wire
5. December 2011 – Top U.S. Web Brands – Nielsen Wire

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

1. Apple: Highest Quarterly Revenue and Earnings Ever [AAPL up 7% early]
2. Google updates their privacy policies and terms of service, consolidating 60 documents into one main Privacy Policy
3. Ready or Not, You’re Getting Facebook Timeline – Mashable
4. Lots of tech references in Pres. Obama’s SOTU, including support for ‘every risk-taker who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.’ – TechCrunch
5. Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions – AllThingsD
6. Will the Jardine’s jazz club saga end in KC today? – kcconfidential.com

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

1. Mark Zuckerberg Spray Paints Graffiti On Real Facebook Wall – TechCrunch
2. Danny Sullivan: A Proposal For Social Network Détente
3. After the market closes today, look for Apple to ‘trounce expectations’ when it announces earnings - AllThingsD
4. ‘Second screens’ harvest, analyze social network comments we make while watching TV – AllThingsD
5. Federal Judge Rules You May Be Forced To Provide Decryption Password – TechCrunch

Monday, January 23, 2012

1. ‘Nerd Fight!’ Facebook rabble-rouser creates bookmarklet to show how Google should do social search. AllThingsD
2. Apple sells 350,000 textbooks in three days, analyst says – CNET News
3. YouTube Reaches 4 Billion Views Per Day – TechCrunch
4. RIM CEO sees no need for ‘drastic change’ as he replaces the co-CEOs for the BlacBerry producer – Mashable
5. New York, Chicago firms win Gigabit Challenge tied to Google’s ultrafast project in Kansas City – KC Biz Journal
6. Weekly SEM Reading List | 1/20/12 - Group 3 Solutions

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Friday, January 13, 2012

1. How I Got Bruce Springsteen to Follow Me On Twitter – Advertising Age
2. 8 iPad 3 Rumors: What It Could Look Like, When It Could Arrive – Mashable
3. One in 10 Americans Make ‘Impulse’ Donations Via Text – Mashable [STUDY]
4. Google acts kind of evil, then apologizes to Kenyan business – WSJ
5. Larry Page Visits His Younger Self (Comic) – AllThingsD

Thursday, January 12, 2012

1. Google’s agenda isn’t evil. It’s merely Google-centric. – TechCrunch
2. Matt Cutts: ‘We just documented a bunch of the signals we use for generating page titles in search.’
3. Apple Mini-Stores Headed to Target – AllThingsD
4. Michelle Obama Joins Twitter – Mashable
5. Foursquare Launches ‘Personalized Search For The Real World’ – Search Engine Land

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

1. Twitter Predicted Romney Win in New Hampshire Primary – Mashable
2. Google’s Matt Cutts ‘shares a search story’ in support of Search + Your World
3. TiVo Research Claims Only 38 Percent Of Users Watch Live TV – TechCrunch
4. HTML5 – Is It Worth the Effort? – ClickZ
5. Inside Facebook – Breaking: Sponsored Stories begin to appear in News Feed

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Google Announcement: ‘We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.’

Here’s what others are saying:

1. Danny Sullivan’s take: Google’s Results Get More Personal With ‘Search Plus Your World’
2. Search Engine Watch: Google Launches Search Plus Your World
3. Mashable: Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut
4. Wall Street Journal: Google Ties Social Service Closer To Search
5. AllThingsD: Are Google’s Plans ‘A Bad Day for the Interet?’

Monday, January 9, 2012

1. Danny Sullivan says that 2011 was ‘The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers’
2. At CES, devices with better battery life aren’t in site, but creative options for recharging are – AllThingsD
3. Square Expands Retail Partnerships; Now Sold At OfficeMax And UPS Store Locations | TechCrunch
4. Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and Me-Too Cloud Service  - AllThingsD
5. On his 77th birthday, Elvis performs in Independence, MO – [Photo Gallery] KansasCity.com
6. Weekly SEM Reading List - Group 3 Solutions

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Friday, January 6, 2012

1. Five Ways to Use Google+ to Improve Your Search Engine Optimization – Social Media Examiner
2. Facebook Grants Rare Product Promotion to Moo Cards – AllThingsD
3. Google’s December post about ‘many of the improvements we make to search.’
4. Nielsen: 290 million Americans own a TV, 211 million Americans are online.
5. KC school official: ‘We are NOT the worst district’ – KansasCity.com

Thursday, January 5, 2012

1. On Google+, Essence Digital explains its role in the video ad buy for the Google Chrome campaign.
2. FB Says Most Photos Flagged by Users Aren’t Actually Offensive…just unflattering  - AllThingsD
3. Barnes & Noble Mulls Splitting Nook Business And Selling “Dead Tree” Publishing Company – TechCrunch
4. First they took Kodachrome away, now bankruptcy looms for Kodak. – Technologizer
5. [How in the world do we fix this?] ‘KC schools may be worst in nation’ – KCBJ

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

1. Google penalizes itself for sponsored post campaign – Search Engine Land.
2. Bing Casting Call series sets out to ‘capture the startup experience from the horse’s mouth’
3. How to Turn Tweets Into Ratings Points – Advertising Age
4. It’s Official: Yahoo Announces PayPal President Scott Thompson As Its New CEO – TechCrunch
5. [Bad news for our region.] Boeing will close 2,100-employee Wichita plant – KC Business Journal

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

1. This Post Sponsored by Google – SEO Book. And a deep dive by Danny Sullivan
2. Wikipedia’s Pledge Drive Ends and so Does Those Jarring Testimonials – AllThingsD
3. Vanessa Fox: Learning How To Say No Isn’t the Answer
4. Google’s Ad Campaign Uses Emotions, Not Search Terms – NYTimes.com
5. The Weekly Group 3 Solutions SEM Reading List | 12/30/11

Monday, January 2, 2012

1. Happy New Year, 2012!

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Friday, December 30, 2011

1. How to Ace a Google Interview – WSJ.com
2. The hot trend, as we prepare for 2012, is animals using touchscreens – AllThingsD
3. Verizon Wireless Cancels Plans To Charge $2 ‘Convenience’ Fee – TechCrunch
4. Jeff Jarvis: Why are we so secretive about sickness and health?

Thursday, December 29, 2011

1. Nearly 3/4 of small businesses are planning on buying a tablet over the next year. – AllThingsD
2. Amazon: We Sold Over 4 Million Kindle Devices This Month; Gifting Of E-Books Up 175 Percent | TechCrunch
3. Penny Arcade: Just Wow! [Paul Christoforo shows how to not do PR for the Avenger controller.]
4. Blogger Paris Lemon gives Google+ the finger.
5. Mizzou institutes new policy for recording classes – Kansas City Business Journal
   

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

1. Consumers Spent $35.3 Billion Online This Holiday Season – AllThingsD
2. How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence with Minimal Effort – Bruce Clay
3. How to Make Money on YouTube – Search Engine Watch
4. Google+ Growth Appears to Accelerate – AllThingsD
5. SEC Announces 2012 Football Schedule – Mizzou fans, book your rooms now!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

1. Google’s Travel Push Angers Web Rivals – WSJ.com
2. Mark Cuban: We don’t need no stinking smartphones at Dallas Mavs games!
3. 9 New Year’s Resolutions For Link Building In 2012. Search Engine Land
4. Google+ Launches 3 New TV Ads Featuring Muppets, Bill Walton & Some Engaged Chick | TechCrunch
5. The Group 3 Solutions Weekly SEM Reading List

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Our reading list for Friday, December 23, 2011

1. From all of us at Kansas City Digital Marketing agency Group 3 Solutions, Merry Christmas and enjoy the holidays with your family and loved ones!
2. Five Marketing Lessons from Santa | Cision Blog
3. How Best Buy Stole Christmas | TechCrunch
4. Apple Had More Web Traffic Than Wal-Mart in November | AllThingsD
5. Finals of the very fun Festive Faceoff from the KC Business Journal

Our reading list for Thursday, December 22, 2011

1. Google Will Pay Mozilla Almost $300M Per Year in Search Deal – AllThingsD
2. LinkedIn Holiday “Consultants” Visiting Profiles – Search Engine Watch
3. Inside Facebook · Study: Twitter Beats Facebook for Media Attention in 2011
4. Facebook Launches Suggested Events Feature Based On Checkins | TechCrunch
5. Traffic to Pinterest Grew 40 Percent in the Last Six Months | AllThingsD

Our reading list for Wednesday, December 21, 2011

1. Still Looking for Gift Ideas? Here Are Wal-Mart’s Suggestions. | AllThingsD
2. Round 2 of the KCBJ Festive Faceoff —vote on some of Kansas City businesses’ best digital holiday cards.
3. TripAdvisor Spins Off From Expedia, Takes Flight On The NASDAQ As A Public Company | TechCrunch
4. Create and or/vote for the most creative caption illustrating what cartoon characters are searching for on Google.
5. Facebook to Eclipse $5 Billion in Ad Sales in 2012 | ClickZ

Our reading list for Tuesday, December 20, 2011

1. An Easter egg for Christmas: Search on Google for ‘let it snow’ and it will snow (on your screen, at least).
2. Kindle Fire On Track For Hundreds Of Millions Of Monthly Ad Impressions; Growing Faster Than The iPad In Early 2010 | TechCrunch
3. Social Media + Search Marketing + Online Media = Success | ClickZ
4. The New York Times ‘is a global news company whose future is mostly digital, and it will live or die on that adventure.’ | Newsonomics
5. NBC Will Stream Super Bowl Broadcast Live | AllThingsD

Monday, December 19, 2011

1. Jeff Jarvis: [re NYT pay meter] How about when you add value to The Times, you earn a credit that delays the next bill?
2. Social media strategy and SEO strategy go hand in hand. | ClickZ
3. 5,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks Stolen From A Truck Stop | TechCrunch
4. Google+ Updates: Improved Stream Controls, Photo Tagging And More | TechCrunch
5. Zynga stock (ZNGA) now off over 10% from $10 IPO offering.

Follow our daily reading list at Twitter.com/Group3Solutions.

Google’s first production server at the Computer History Museum.
Photo Credit: jurvetson

Taking that concept to the World Wide Web, Page and Brin set out to construct a search engine that utilized link structure (along with the actual anchor text in the hyperlinks that pages point to) to return relevant results, and to do so quickly and efficiently. PageRank — a play off of Larry’s last name –was introduced. “BackRub” — perhaps a play on back links? — became Google — for sure a play on googol — and the rest is history.

[Larry and Sergey’s Stanford paper, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, is a fascinating read into the backstory of Google. Amongst the talk of damping factors and mathematical formulas like PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn), the paper gives great insight into the duo’s thinking as it laid out its goal of “Bringing Order to the Web.”]

Now, let’s take that concept to your site. If you write about “rocket science” … and you include that phrase in page titles … and you have it in page headings … and you have links within your pages that include rocket science as the anchor text and point to other pages about the subject … then you’ve told your visitors, and the search engines, that one of the themes on your site is rocket science. Within reason, the more this phrase is naturally used in page content, titles, headings and hyperlinks, the better. Google knows this phrase is important to you, and it can begin to judge the importance of your site for that term.

Here’s where PageRank, external links and anchor text solidify your theme and can help establish your site as an authority on rocket science. When other sites and blogs and Tweets, etc., link to you with rocket science in the content of their pages and in the actual hyperlinks that point to your page, your site in essence receives votes for being important for that topic. (It’s one thing for you to write “we are the best at rocket science.” It’s another for someone else to write that “these guys are great at rocket science” and link to you for more information on that subject.) The more votes you receive the better you rank. And, more importantly, the “better” the vote (from a site which itself is an authority on the topic) the better your ranking.

Again, the concept can’t be abused. Excessive links from bad neighborhoods or from multiple domains controlled by the same owner or from other shady practices can lead to penalties. Like other SEO techniques, it shouldn’t be overdone, or forced, or spammed … but legitimate links from legitimate sites give a boost to your Google Juice … and everybody likes Google Juice, right?

Remember the premise of Google: Each time a given author was quoted as a reference in other academicians’ research papers, it was seen as a vote for the authority of that author. Now, simply carry that forward to the multi-billion-dollar external search engine: The more times a site is referenced, the more authority that site has, and the higher it ranks. Write good copy, optimize it well for on-page factors, and let the world vote on that content with links to your site.

• Yahoo to end Search Submit, its paid inclusion program.  ‘Committing our resources…to our core areas of focus.’
• ‘Westlake Ace Hardware has tapped Kansas City, MO-based…Barkley to take on its CRM and database marketing.’ DMNews
• ‘We believe the worst of the recession is behind us,’ Google says in reporting 7% year-over-year revenue growth. WSJ
• White House converses with LinkedIn community ‘regarding the challenges faced by health care professionals…’
• Was the media ‘punk’d by Balloon Boy?’ Mashable | Twitter, Facebook mash up the story. Mashable
• Us: ‘We Don’t Use the Keyword Meta Tag.’  Danny Sullivan: ‘Yahoo, You DO Index Meta Keywords Tag.’
• Van Natta cuts staff, tears down walls, turns over the C-suite. WSJ Digits.  Will it save MySpace?
• ‘Shared bicycles,’ emblazoned in Google-logo colors, were a favorite on our recent Googleplex visit. ‘Green Tour‘
• Been following the Sidekick data loss debacle at Microsoft sub Danger? They now say most data is recovered. Mashable
• Experian Hitwise data on US search share, long tail, search engine marketshare by industry. via Virginia Nussey
• Danny Sullivan uses the word xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk to prove that Yahoo DOES use the meta keyword tag. Search Engine Land
• Twitter as ‘poor-man’s email’ … and as a tool for community, brand and business. Nice Quick-Start Biz Guide. ClickZ
• To infinity and beyond … or at least 10,000 points anyway, as the Dow tops that mark for the first time in a year. Up 50% since March.
• Will digital print, and the ability to customize content, save traditional publishers? Trib, Time Inc. try it. DMNews
• ‘Promoted Videos has become a critical way for creators to get their content in front of viewers.’ Now via AdWords.
• It took LinkedIn 477 days to get first million users. The latest million took 12 days. Now at 50 million total users.
• Yahoo and Google to report earnings soon. YHOO stock up 39% this year, GOOG up 70% since January. Kara Swisher
• Bloomburg buys BusinessWeek…cheap. Conde Nast’s Portfolio is gone. 3 biz mags remain: BW, Forbes, Fortune. WSJ
• Our weekly Roundup of search engine marketing, advertising, analytics and Kansas City Tweets, through 10/09/2009.
• Top users are on social sites more than email, IM combined. ‘Dollars are following eyeballs,’ ad prices low. eMarketer
• ‘This ship is sinking,’ says Mashable regarding MySpace. Traffic has dropped nearly 20% since June.
• Fun stuff. Esquire’s Digital Man, Barry Sonnenfeld, vlogs about the Traeger Professional Wood Pallet Grill. Kara Swisher
• Email no longer rules, but does that save time…or waste more of it? WSJ
• 9.1 million saw The Office ‘spoof within a spoof’ wedding entrance, but 27+ million have seen the JK Wedding Dance. E!
• WSJ: ‘the biggest battle over fonts — ever — has broken out in New York federal court.’ NBC vs. Font Bureau.
• Google Blog: ‘This week we made many small improvements to the functionality and usability of our search results.’

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A recent study about search engine ranking factors, highlights where keywords are most effective on a website. The study results were gathered from a 2009 poll taken by a panel of 72 SEO experts. The top ranking on-page (keyword-specific) ranking factor was using the keyword in the title tag on the page.

Summarizing methods that we already knew and what these findings supported, here are tips on where to place your keywords on your site:

• Title Tags. Get your keyword into the first couple of words in the title tag if possible.
• Domain Name and URL. This one’s more difficult we know. Many of us don’t have a site devoted to just one topic, rather a collection of topics. So if your keyword can’t be in the root domain name, consider adding it to the subdomain name or page name URL.
• Headings On The Page.  Get your keyword into the H1 tag/main headline on your page. 
• Copy On The Page. Include your keyword in the copy of the page. This will let Search Engines find the content on your site that does relate to the keyword searched on.
• Internal and External Linking. Include your keyword in any internal cross-linking or external linking to your site. Include this method in your internal SEO practices. When possible, request external sites that are linking to your site to include the specific keyword in their link.
• Description Meta Tag. Include your keyword in the description meta tag. Google will pull the description meta tag and display it in the search results, if the keyword is included.
• Image Alt Text. Include your keyword in your brief descriptive image alt tags.

And, of course, always make your page and/or website relevant to your keyword with rich, supporting content, videos and images. Remember, keywords are still important, it’s just a matter of how you use them.