SearchInfluence

Black Friday: 5 Apps That Make Bargain Shopping Easier — Mashable

The holidays are upon us, and many businesses local and nationwide are gearing up for the Black Friday sales frenzy. Be a savvy shopper and utilize these handy applications in order to find the best deals, compare prices, check to see where your desired item is on sale in your area and more!

How Groundbreaking Thinkers Spread Their Ideas — Inc.com

Hot on the heels of big redesigns to a whole suite of Google services, including Docs, Reader and Gmail, searchers will soon see shakeups in the way local listings are displayed on their results pages. Instead of the familiar red pin of Google Maps, searchers looking for businesses matching a given term such as breast augmentation Maryland will now be greeted with a row of grey icons which can be expanded with a click to show a highlighted popout with site preview, map and reviews:

Google Places results page when no selection is highlighted.

Results page with mini-Place page expanded.

Search Optimization and 404 Errors — SEOChat

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, you’ve probably seen a colorful or visually engaging 404 page that pops up when you’ve reached an invalid page on a website. What you may not know, though, is that these pages have SEO potential and should be optimized for ease of use by your viewers. Check out this article to find out the four most important elements of a user-friendly 404 page, along with a bevy of other tips.

How to Use 3 New Facebook Features for Better Social Media Marketing — CopyBlogger

Google is feeding local business owners to the wolves with their latest Places update. Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manger, announced yesterday evening that Google will be “helping” business owners keep their business listings updated by now allowing anyone, mischievous competitors included, to edit your entire Places listing for you. Yes, even if it is verified.

How… thoughtful of Google.

The Content Strategy that Made Justin Bieber a Star — Content Marketing Institute

You may or may not be a fan of the teen star Justin Bieber and his ubiquitous haircut, but there’s no denying that some serious marketing has gone into making him one of the most famous and adored pop sensations in recent memory. Disney Media, geniuses that they are, have floated a unique campaign to make Bieber famous and skyrocket him to domination of his niche — in this case, pre-teen music. Content Marketing Institute’s Scott Aughtmon dissects the tactics Radio Disney undertook to market their star and how you can apply these concepts to your own campaigns.

How Small Businesses Can Use Google Plus — Expand2Web

While Facebook is an excellent resource for small business social media engagement, Google+ is an up-and-comer that as of yet doesn’t allow business profiles. However, hope is on the way: winter of 2011 will yield the first allowed G+ commercial accounts, so if you’re a media-savvy business owner now’s the time to start formulating your strategy. Expand2Web’s Daniela Baker has the scoop on what you should be thinking about in the upcoming months to optimize your establishment’s chances on Google’s mean streets.

Friday Five: Optimizing Content & Visibility with SlideShare — Edelman Digital

Just four months after jumping into the daily deals pool, Facebook abandoned its efforts with regard to small business space (at least those not related to check-in services). Given that the business in question had to have a Facebook profile and only about 15% of the average business’ fans are located in the same city as the business itself, it makes sense that the social media giant would turn its focus toward more profitable venues — eliminating its Groupon competitor while reducing its lame-duck Foursquare competitor to a sideline project. Hot on the heels of this news, however, comes the announcement from local-focused entity Yelp that their daily deal program will be severely scaled back, and that “we’ll continue to email out any amazing Deals we find; rest assured when it comes to quality vs quantity, we’ll choose quality every time.”

Well, there are worse places to get your deals.

A Look at the Growing Trend of Internet Marketing Con-men

We’ve all seen these people at conferences, pimping out their extra shiny business cards and talking like late-night infomercials – the online business strategists and social media experts. They claim to have the secrets to creating a successful online brand and promise “more profitable business now” if only you are willing to hear the pitch. They use buzz words like “online reputation score” and “viral marketing” to excite business owners into trusting their expertise and ultimately signing up for expensive year long contracts but never promise actual results.

Could it hurt Google to be a little bit more clear? Mr. Kohn at Blind Five Year Old thinks not. Google’s public persona can be unclear and capricious, while the size of their user base is so large that noise from their algorithm can have deep effects on the livelihood of those users. Are his principles of “real” engagement, transparency, and amplification already seen across Google’s user interactions? Or does the the SEO community and the SEO dominatrix take care of the rest?

Not too long ago, I was completely ignorant of any tracking on the internet. I thought, like many, that the things I did online were solely known to me and wouldn’t affect anything. I thought that “Private Browsing” really meant that, and that no one else would know or care that I played a bunch of flash games and that I worked in whatever field I did.