Section 2: Around the Net in Search Marketing

By Laurie Sullivan , October 20, 2008 Subscribe | Back Issues | Reply to Editor | MediaPost Home

Guiding SEMs Through Firefox Plug-ins Search Engine Land You might want to keep this list of Firefox browser plug-ins handy. Josh Dreller highlights about 17 very cool tools that can save time by making you more efficient. Morning Coffee, appropriately named, lets you open a group of Web sites, from AdWords to adCenter to management tools, with one click. Then there's IE Tab, a tool that embeds Internet Explorer in Mozilla/Firefox tabs. Use it when working in Web solutions that seem to work better in IE. Download Statusbar is another. Use the tools when downloading stuff, such as white papers, brand guidelines, manuals, from the Internet. It lets you see all downloads from your Firefox bottom toolbar, rather than opening an extra download window. When you get the chance, click back a few posts to checkout "CheckFox," a Firefox plug-in, and potentially real time-saver, that lets you check or uncheck any group of selected check boxes online. - Read the whole story... SEO: White Hat vs. Black Hat Search Engine People What can White Hat and Black Hat SEO teach us about social media optimization? Brian Carter makes a gallant effort to explain by first defining the terms and then providing examples. Through a combination of Web sites, numerous blogs, and social networks, Carter holds six of the top 10 rankings for his name, and 10 of the top 20. So, Carter considers himself a "White Hat," meaning he's earned the rankings with hard work, quality content and maintaining a good reputation. No small deal ranking six in the top 10. After all, "Brian Carter" is a common name. Still, Carter says it would be "Black Hat" of him to try and secure all top 10 rankings. The best way to remain a "White Hat" is to stay away from fake profiles, redundant profiles, keyword spam profiles, aggregator endless loops, and social media for link building only. - Read the whole story... Managing Traffic Spikes NVI How many times have you searched and found a link on Digg, Reddit or any other popular UGC/social media site only to click on it to find the server unresponsive? I have, countless times. The servers can't deal with the amount of traffic, so they practically come nearly to a crashing halt. Pier-Luc Petitclerc notes several solutions, though none guarantee your server will withstand a Digg push. They should help, however. In the examples, Petitclerc uses a traditional popular setup: PHP 5, Apache 2, MySQL 5 running on a Linux server. One of the best ways to ensure your server will resist incoming traffic spikes is to optimize your code, but it's probably the most difficult solution, too, and the one you have least control over. - Read the whole story... Finding SEO Competitor Keywords Search Engine Journal Learning from your competitors isn't easy, but it can move you to the head of the line. For starters, know what works for your competitors, and what doesn't. Taking time to analyze and compare several of your competitors' on-page and off-page keywords can make your list much better and help you choose your keywords more carefully. The key isn't to copy other sites, but develop an effective way to compete and move ahead. Tips in this post help you identify how your competitors rank and use PPC keywords. It also discusses backlinks and social media. Analyze how social media users react to your competitors, their feedback and comments, what they like and dislike. This helps you improve your own site. - Read the whole story... Socially In Control Yahoo Anecdotal Yahoo has released a tool that integrates social networks, social graphs, social bookmarks, social news, social gaming, and other sites across its network. Available in beta to all, Yahoo Profiles provides a central destination, also known as the "control panel," allowing users to pull information on them from across the Web and manage their identity, activities, interests, and connections from one location. Yahoo calls the tool a key element in the Yahoo Open Strategy, which aims to make services open and social. As the search engine begins to add capabilities to services like Yahoo's homepage, Mail, and Messenger, the tools will use information from profiles as the source to identify the person's social preferences, and likes and dislikes, similar to profiles seen on Facebook. APIs made available as part of Yahoo! Open Strategy will allow developers to integrate a variety of pages and build more social experiences based on user preferences. - Read the whole story...

Search Insider - Around the Net for Monday, October 20, 2008 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?sfa=ed&t=44&d=2008-10-20

You are receiving this newsletter at brian.bobo@gmail.com as part of your membership with MediaPost. If this issue was forwarded to you and you would like to begin receiving a copy of your own, please visit our site - www.mediapost.com - and become a complimentary member. For advertising opportunities see our online media kit. If you'd rather not receive this newsletter in the future click here. We welcome and appreciate forwarding of our newsletters in their entirety or in part with proper attribution. (c) 2008 MediaPost Communications, 1140 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001