SearchInfluence

1. 10 Mistakes Every Startup Should Avoid When Optimizing for Search Engines - Search Engine Journal

It’s no secret that a company’s online presence can help and maybe hurt their business, and this is especially true for start ups that are turning to the Internet to get the word out about their services or products. This list (while in no way exhaustive) is a great collection of some of the biggest mistakes that rookies make. Some of the mistakes listed include poor/no user interface and user experience, pages that take forever to load, funky site architecture, meaningless URL naming conventions, and skimping on content marketing and blogs. Of course, there’s also the ever-present “Don’t Ignore Social Media.”

1. How Google Now Will Impact SEO & What You Can Do to Get a Head Start – Search Engine Watch

Google hosted their big developers conference this week, Google I/O. Although there were no big new products introductions, one service that has been getting a lot of attention is Google Now. Although this product was released over a year ago, it is now available for free download on Apple and Android phones and tablets. Guillaume Bouchard has some interesting ideas about how Google Now will affect the SEO community and what we can do to stay ahead of the curve.

1. Dusting The Website For Spring: Optimization and SEO Cleaning – SEOmoz

Local U brings together the brightest minds in Local Search.

With Local U just around the corner, I’m getting really excited about the opportunity it’s bringing to New Orleans. While there are so many things I love about the this city, it’s not necessarily known for its booming tech industry… yet. Local businesses could use a technological boost, and that’s exactly why I’m so eager to have Local U in our city. This informative event brings together some of the top players in local search to give entrepreneurs an introductory training session in Internet marketing.

1. HTML5: An Essential Weapon for SEOs – Search Engine Journal

The new HTML5 is set to receive a major upgrade and there are 5 key SEO innovations coming :

1. Nofollow’s little brothers and sisters
2. Alt-text gets some much needed support
3. Identifying the most important links on your page
4. No more Flash for videos
5. AJAX gets search engine friendly

2. Which Finds the First-Ever Website Better, Google or Bing? – Search Engine Land

1. Bing Places For Business replaces Bing Business Portal - Small Business Search Marketing

Bing has made some significant changes in its local business listing management platform. Bing Places will replace the old Bing Business Portal, and along with the name change comes a simpler system that strips away much of the non-local search functionality that previously existed. Learn more about the update and decide whether you think this is a good move for Bing.

2. 10 Inbound Discoveries That Will Disrupt Marketing Forever - HubSpot

1. Back to Basics: Meta Descriptions 101 - Search Engine Journal
If you haven’t looked at your meta descriptions in over a year or 6 months, it may be time to refresh your meta data. Meta descriptions are the ones that will show up in search results, so they should sound coherent to humans. Read this refresher on meta tags.

2. Thinking about adding 10,000 pages to your site at once? Take caution. - Search Engine Land
If you are adding a large number of pages to your site, it is better to do so in stages according to Google’s Matt Cutts. Adding them in batches may be better. Releasing thousands of pages at once may cause Google to manually review your site for any suspicious behavior.

The Holy Grail Of Internet Marketing: Owning The Whole SERP — Search Engine Land

Search Influence’s very own Will Scott gives a brief how-to on the essential methods of owning your search engine results page. The main points he hits in the post are the importance of branded SERP ownership, branded  AdWords campaigns, branded organic results, Google+ and local optimization. But the “real win” of owning the whole SERP is obviously taking over your non-branded ranking page. One of the more surprising tidbits for PPC naysayers is “It may seem crazy to pay for clicks to your site, especially if your site shows up in the first position organically, but the data shows that having both the first and “zeroth” positions increases clicks by up to 89%.” Now, that’s a big increase!

1. The Marketing Value of YouTube - SEO MOZ

The author here discusses the impacts YouTube can have for your product. YouTube is a great resource if you are looking to build your brand. It is important that you put up quality videos over the quantity of videos. Check out the article for some great information if you are looking to build a presence on YouTube.

2. Google Places Is Being Updated To Google + Local - Search Engine Journal

This talks about the transition from Google Places to Google + Local.  The post describes how this should make the process easier to use, faster updates, and integration with Adwords (Express) and G +.

5 Ways To Pay For Twitter Exposure - Crazy Egg

We’re all used to the ads on Google and Facebook, but paid campaigns on Twitter are still unfamiliar for many businesses thinking about a paid advertising campaign online. Here are five different methods to get your tweets seen by more people.

Digg Banned From SERPs (Updated) - Search Engine Journal

Here’s a doozy for you! Last week, popular social bookmarking site Digg.com disappeared from Google’s SERPs! Read for the full report from Search Engine Journal.

Three Easy-to-Make Content Marketing Blunders - Blue Glass