SearchInfluence

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.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is already complex enough—and with the many myths that have sprung up around it, it’s even harder to understand the ins and outs of page rank, keywords, and website optimization. Here are 7 myths that will help separate fact from fiction when it comes to SEO.

1. You must be in the top 3 results

Many believe that “successful” SEO means ranking in the top three or four spots on Google search results, but this is no longer true. On the second and third page of results, the top links still garner the most clicks—so that means, in some cases, being 11^th might actually be better than being 9^th. Additionally, author profiles and snippets with pictures draw reader’s attention, no matter where they are featured. Rank isn’t the only factor of success.

• 7 Fun Ways to Inject Holiday Spirit into Your Social Media Campaign – Search Engine Journal

It’s official: the holiday season is here. Get your social media in the spirit! Incorporating the holidays into your company’s online presence can create many business opportunities. During the holidays, people are spending more time online looking for gifts, decorating ideas, and other holiday inspiration. Make use of your already-existing connection to capitalize on the opportunity!

• Why I Love Google Panda (and you should, too) – SEOMoz

1. Facebook Launches New Option on Charitable Gifts — Mashable

Recently, Facebook created a new feature on Charitable Gifts that allow users to make a charitable donation in recognition of friends and family members. Users will be able to either choose the organization or let the friend or family member choose. With its 11 non-profit partners, Facebook is rolling out this test to help these organizations raise funds and increase awareness. Is this something you would considering doing on the social network?

2. New “Quality Impact” feature on Bing Advertising to Help with Transparency — Search Engine Land

Starting in February of 2011, Google began updating its Page Rank algorithms to weed out what they deemed “thin content” and black hat SEO. Google’s algorithmic updates were specifically targeting low-quality content farms and websites engaged in dubious practices to increase their Page Rank, such as keyword stuffing or link schemes. With these updates, playfully named Panda and Penguin, Google seemed to be sending a volley out to the web marketing world to shape up or risk a deduction in Page Rank.

Here. Have a tissue.

 
We’re excited to present this video of our CEO Will Scott speaking in a panel from the Search Insider Summit 2012. Moderated by aimClear’s Marty Weintraub, Social SEO: How Search Marketers Should Think About Optimizing Social examines the increasing social aspects of SEO and how branding with these tools can grow your business. Check out the full video after the jump!

Video streaming by Ustream

1.  The Never-Ending Quest For The Perfect Map – Google Official Blog

Wednesday afternoon, Google unveiled an assortment of new plans for their Maps features. For starters, they’re now extending their ambitious and mildly creepy quest to photograph every last inch of the planet to the level of an Olympic event, sending photographers out into the road-less netherworld with skis, galoshes and hiking boots to ensure the absolute accuracy of their maps. While this development is great for EXTREME map-users, it’s distinctly bad news for an entire sub-genre of B horror movies that hinges on teenagers’ proclivity to getting lost on foggy, foreboding camping trips. The bigger takeaway from this set of updates is the revelation that Maps will soon be available offline for Android, enabling navigation in the absence of an internet service signal. The particulars of the nature and timing of the update process are sure to be fodder for many future SEO meetings.

Have you ever noticed two people to be arguing over the semantics of something? If so, they might make good SEOs! When it comes to search engine optimization, the meaning of the keywords being used in a search are as important as the well-optimized content you spend hours perfecting before rolling live.

A keyword is the word or group of words that a person types in to a search engine in hopes of finding a particular result. Someone searching “apple” may want to find a piece of fruit, but there may be different information that someone else hopes to find in their search results. This is where semantics comes into play.

We’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Most importantly, this happened. Now for the rest:

Beluga Analytics Offers Demographics & Stats Behind Your Guiltiest Pleasures — AimClearBlog.com

We’ll start today with something really fun: Grooveshark released Beluga Analytics today, which is a wealth of demographic data using music as a touchstone for marketing data. Did you want to know what game systems Faith No More fans likely have? Maybe not, but beyond simple interest, this data gives a really interesting and sneaky way to target people for advertising. If you see that a certain band’s fans are disproportionally predisposed to own a certain product, targeting them with your Facebook ads might give you business you never thought existed.

We’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Times-Picayune changes bring strong reactions among subscribers and those farther away — Times Picayune/Nola.com

Much to the dismay of many morning paper readers, the technological media revolution has claimed another victim. Starting in the fall, New Orleans’s Pulitzer Prize-winning paper is dropping to a 3-weekday format, following other Southern papers owned by Advance Publications. However, the future might not be so bleak: web content gives the Times-Picayune writers constant work divorced from a traditional publishing schedule, and the frantic pace of online writing can cover stories effectively as they happen. We mourn the losses, but are hopeful for the future of the paper and online publication from traditional media.