Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says

Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Google and Twitter’s Free Society is Crumbling - Huffington Post
Are social networking and Google responsible for the civil unrest around the world? While riots and Occupy movements are not a result of social networking, the ideas behind these movements are certainly propagated via tweets and posts, and it would appear that governments feel directly threatened by its strength.  Unfortunately, Twitter and Google have both agreed to repress content that does not comply with ‘local laws.’ Sounds to me like they are feeding the protest fire.

Google Panda in Plain English – Single Grain
The introduction of the Google Panda algorithm in February 2011 left many SEO experts Internet marketers and BAMBOOzled about how to defend your site against this spam filter. Single Grain has provided an effective timeline infographic to inform you of new link building rules and how to revamp post-panda.

AHREFS Review: An In-Depth Look at a New Link Research Tool – SEOBook
A new tool, similar to SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer, has hit the link research scene. Ahrefs asserts that their own index is updated every half hour and that they have a ranking database of approximately 45 million keywords.  Prices increase and decrease based on the amount of data you have. It includes special features such as new links, referring domain breakdown, and SERP positions.

SEO: Are you Relevant, or Are You Vital? – Small Business Search Marketing
Vital is the new relevant.  According to Small Business Search Marketing, it is no longer enough to produce relevant content and title tags. While they don’t provide the answers, SMB proposes a vital question: “If you were a search engine, what kind of pages would you want to show the searchers?”

Your Stance on your Internet Marketing

The most in-depth coverage is from Search Engine Land, who chronicles the story’s discovery, damage control, resolution, and culmination, giving the interested the whole story and showing Google to be somewhat fair by penalizing themselves. There likely isn’t any intentional foul here — already the Chrome page has a PageRank penalty, dropping it relatively in the SERPs.

But for the average marketer, the rubbernecking and tin-foil hats are only window-dressing. Underlying this story, like the widespread story from earlier this week about another outsourced marketing fiasco, is the need to ask your marketing company “How are things going?” With both stories, there was a breakdown on the client’s side to check on the day-to-day running of the marketing campaign. For Google, this led to sloppy blog posting guidelines from a company that doesn’t understand the finer points of SEO or user design; for Ocean Marketing, it led to a one-man shop answering hundred of emails becoming frustrated and lashing out.

Any business letting someone else do their outreach or marketing has to be an active participant. It is not enough to pass the buck, throwing those you’re working with under the bus. The “it’s not me” game played by Google, then Essence Digital, and finally Unruly shows not that the companies are all trying to act in good faith, but that not one of the three companies checked to see if the campaign would do more damage than good.

Clients of marketing firms: read the copy written for you; it reflects your business. Ask for the guidelines for freelancers and writers; making sure that best practices are mandated, rather than suggested. Avoid bad press for your brand by being involved in the process, making sure that the campaign is following the vision you had when you left the planning meeting. Don’t be Google — be better.

As the 2012 presidential hopefuls cultivate their public personas through careful manipulation of social media outlets, it’s easy to forget that before the 2008 presidential election, social media had never been used on such a scale.

Politicians had relied on old school phone banks and direct mailing campaigns for decades to mobilize their troops and direct voters to the polls on election day, but the power of the Internet had yet to be fully leveraged in a political campaign.

What was groundbreaking in 2008 has become the standard for the 2012 presidential election, and politicians of all stripes are turning to the power of social networking sites to reach out to potential voters.

Political Engagement Meets Social Engagement

It all starts with a numbers game. How many times have you voted for president in your lifetime? How many times have you checked your inbox today? How about your curbside mailbox?

If you are under 30, chances are you have cancelled and restarted your Netflix account more often than you have played a direct role in electing the most powerful politician in the world. You probably also have the Internet in your pocket or purse right now, just a few swipes and taps away from an email or a political tweet that could change your weekend plans from watching Arrested Development reruns to attending a political rally.

Just as the 1993 Motor Voter bill was intended to give the young, the poor, the marginalized, and the otherwise politically disenfranchised a quick and easy way to register to vote, Obama leveraged the instant connectivity and infinite scalability of social media to energize his voting base through the free, easily accessible, and already tremendously popular medium of social media. And don’t think his competition didn’t notice.

Social Media Comes of Age as a Political Tool

Mobilizing the Internet generation has proven difficult, if not impossible, for many politicians that haven’t fully embraced the latest ways we communicate. And since energizing your core population of voters is the name of the game in modern American politics, it’s easy to see why every politician is turning to social media.

While Sara Palin may have enjoyed berating the “community activist” ways of her one-time opponent back in 2008, by the end of the election cycle she had become one of the most vocal politicians on one of the largest active communities on the internet: Facebook.  And while she relied on her Facebook page as the main means of communication between her camp and the media, Palin has gone to great lengths and hired a team of “social media secret police” to control what ends up on her profile.

While deleting comments made on your wall may be seen as either a necessity or black hat manipulation, it serves to underscore the importance of social media in American politics today. Now every major candidate for the 2012 election has a Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube channel.

So don’t be surprised if your mailbox remains empty as your Twitter feed and Gmail fill up as the election nears. Just as FDR proved the power of radio and JFK leveraged television to get into the White House – each game changing new technology forever altering the way the American public interacts with elected officials – President Obama ushered in the era of social media as a political tool. For better or worse.

Attention, Starfleet: the indubitable wisdom of Mr. Spock rings true even in the contemporary world of SEO. Join SuccessWorks’ director and lifelong Trekkie Heather Lloyd-Martin as she discusses some of her favorite Spock quotes and how everyone’s favorite half-Vulcan has wisdom to be applied to even the thorniest of search engine dilemmas.

Miss The Live Q&A With Google’s Matt Cutts? Here It Is. — Search Engine Roundtable

Matt Cutts, senior Google Search Quality expert and all-around SEO dominatrix, took a few minutes before the anti-trust hearing on Wednesday to answer live-tweeted questions from users all over the world. In case you weren’t there for the live stream, SER has you covered with a hard copy of the Q&A session that includes a brief rundown of Cutts’ recent movements and several timely questions about webmaster concerns and the state of the SEO world. Sign of Google’s openness with its users or last-minute PR stunt — what do you think?

Mining YouTube for Keyword Research — SEOChat

While it’s not the first place many of us think to look when it comes to keyword research, YouTube is a veritable bonanza of information to the savvy marketer. While many SEO professionals prefer to work within a specific subfield and pride themselves on their personal knowledge, countless others are faced with the problem of exploring new territories without the help of SEO-minded experts in the area. However, as titles, tags and text belonging to videos are by their nature relevant keywords, YouTube can be an excellent resource for filling in the gaps left behind by Google’s provided tools.

Social Media is Sucking the Life Out of My Business! — Search Engine Guide

Are you a small business owner who wants to break into social media, but are concerned with the time and resource investment it takes to run a campaign? Search Engine Guide’s Stoney deGeyter takes a look at the most common complaints from overwhelmed would-be media butterflies and addresses them with aplomb to help you get the most from your online efforts instead of pouring away the hours into them.

Political Advertisements Invade Twitter: A Vote for Revenue — Search Engine Journal

Twitter, that longtime proponent of egalitarian media sharing, has thrown its hat into the ring of political venue by opening up “promoted tweets” to political campaigners. These items will be distinguished via color coding and “sponsored by” markers that appear via hover box, appearing in the “top tweets” section of the site.

Are you one of the lucky search marketing professionals who’s experiencing SMX East in the Big Apple? For those of us following along at home, Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone provides a thorough and thought-provoking overview of the topics discussed at SMX’s latest SoLoMO (social media, local and mobile search) panel with Gib Olander, Gregg Stewart and Siva Kumar.

15 Tips To Optimize Your LinkedIn Initiative — Techipedia

Although LinkedIn doesn’t have the sheer weight of user numbers as its more socially-focused brethren like Facebook, its usability in the business world makes it an ideal source for adding contacts, keeping up with the latest industry news and exploring new business opportunities. If you’re interested in leveraging all that you can out of your presence in the online business world, these 15 handy tips should get you well on your way to sparkling content and increased interaction with colleagues and contacts.

Google Places: Now Permanently Closed with 2 clicks — Blumenthals

In another head-scratching move from the Google Places team, it’s now apparently even easier to get a business listed as closed without owner confirmation. With one experimental click, Mike Blumenthal saw his business listed “permanently closed” with twelve hours and received no notification of any sort. While Google has promised a fix “in coming days,” this experience is troubling for many business owners and we’ll be keeping an eye on the developing story.

Google Launches First Google+ APIs — Mashable

The first application programming interfaces for Google+ have at long last been unleashed, to the exultations of hoards of enthusiastic developers. While the APIs themselves are fairly bare-bones — limited to public data, with the ability to query a single person or activity on the network — developers have expressed great enthusiasm, with the majority surveyed expressing the opinion that G+ has what it takes to go toe-to-toe with Facebook.

Why Zagat might be a smarter purchase for Google than Yelp — Search Engine Guide

As we noted last week, Google’s acquisition of restaurant review giant Zagat is bound to make some waves as they hone in on Yelp’s local review market. Search Engine Guide’s Mike Moran presents this nuanced argument as to why this is a smart move for Google — perhaps even more savvy than their previous plan.

Hot on the heels of the Facebook and Yelp deal eliminations, Peter Krasilovsky offers this nuanced and insightful view of the situation — as well as the suggestion that the trend may have already peaked.

Twitter, YouTube, Facebook And Foursquare: Social Media Marketing By The Numbers [INFOGRAPHIC] — Media Bistro AllTwitter

This Mashable infographic displays the numbers on some of the most successful social media marketing campaigns, from clicks and retweets to subscribers and fans.

9 Reasons Why Your Content Is Not Shared on Social Networks: New Research — Social Media Examiner

Having trouble getting your content to stick out in a tumultuous sea of data? Interested in getting it out there via the social sphere, or in understanding why some pieces get shared but not others? Phil Mershon of Social Media Examiner is on the case with this handy list of nine reasons why your audience may not be publicizing your product and what to do about it.

Optimize The Google +1 Button — Blind Five Year Old

After Google’s rehaul of the +1 button for increased shareability on Google+, it seems like a logical conclusion that the feature will now be more or less a Like button in functionality (if not in form). AJ Kohn of Blind Five Year Old leads the charge in optimization endeavors using this new feature on a self-hosted WordPress blog with an eye on speed, placement, snippet richness and more.

Condensing & Repositioning SEO Copy with Jquery Sliders — Graywolf’s SEO

Breaking content up into digestible chunks that are still content-rich and won’t penalize your optimization or conversion rates is as easy as pie with Michael Gray’s guide to Jquery sliders.

While Twitter by its very nature lends itself to split-second buzz and instant information sharing, sometimes that buzz is neither constructive nor informative. If you’re in the predicted path of Hurricane Irene, here’s a collection of up-to-the-minute resources (in tweet form, no less) with a wide variety of useful information with regard to pet care, keeping track of precious possessions and the locations of local resources and shelters. Keep dry and stay safe, folks — and make sure all your bases are covered with these useful resources.

Facebook’s Massive Kitchen Sink Update: Photo Tag Approvals And So Much More — TechCrunch

The long national nightmare is over and the ‘book has finally implemented something that users have been calling for since its inception: users are now allowed to approve photo tags before updates are posted to said users’ profiles. This is just one part of Facebook’s kitchen-sink approach to “Mak[ing] It Easier to Share with Who You Want,” a new suite a features that pushes a common-sense approach to privacy via explicitly displaying whether posted statuses, pictures, et cetera are public or visible at varying levels of the users’ friends. Additionally, Facebook Places has been all but eliminated, with a lack of emphasis on Foursquare-esque checkin services and more attention given to location-based deals.

Google+ Now Lets You Ignore or Block People — Search Engine Watch

Social networks of all stripes are revamping their security policies this week as Google+ announces the new capability for users to ignore or block people. Ignoring will render all of the ignorer’s posts, notifications and Circles activity invisible to the ignorer without notification; blocking takes it a step further by removing the person from your extended circles and preventing interactions between the two of you via post. Additionally, it’s also now possible to see all photos one has been tagged in via one link, as well as a handful of other minor updates.

UK to Twitter, Facebook & RIM: We Won’t Ban Social Media — Mashable

With the buzz around social media revolution at an all-time high thanks to the still-ongoing events of the Arab Spring and other political upheavals such as the London riots, many are speculating that social media crackdowns are in the future for many. However, British officials are making it clear that they will not take the path of censorship.

Search Google Maps By Talking — Search Engine Roundtable

Google has announced that voice search is coming to Google Maps. Users will now be able to get directions by speaking their location and destination into their phones. As someone who tends to get lost often and is all too guilty of frantically mobile-mapping in the car, this is going to be very useful for the mobile user base — safer, quicker and more effective than juggling phone and steering wheel.

And as a bonus link…

In case you didn’t hear our big news, here’s the NOLA.com piece on Search Influence being named in the Inc. Top 500. So nice we had to say it twice! Congratulations to the other

In honor of World Humanitarian Day, Mashable has assembled a collection of 12 movers and shakers in the human rights world who are using social media to pitch campaigns and raise awareness about issues from illiteracy to world hunger to clean water rights.

How Small Business Can Build Links And Likes With Facebook — Link Spiel

Facebook is free, easy to use and, for good or for ill, overwhelmingly dominant in the social media realm. So why are so few small businesses utilizing it to its full potential? Link Spiel’s Debra Mastaler gives this nuanced and thorough approach to the basics — along with sharing the astounding example of a small ice cream shop in a town of 216 that boasts 453 likes and a boom in consumer awareness at zero cost to them.

HOW TO: Properly Use Badges To Engage Customers — Mashable

Gamification of social media has been on the up and up since FourSquare poked its head into the scene in 2009. Instantly attention-grabbing, colorful and fun to collect, badges are a shareable media piece that everyone loves to show off. However, Foursquare has taken the focus off its badging system and as a result the approach has been derided as outmoded, gimmicky and just plain lame. However, a well-designed badge system offers a wide array of appeal to the savvy marketer. Click through to find out how to optimize your badge campaign!

Statistics: Don’t Make These Mistakes – Whiteboard Friday — SEOmoz

Everybody loses when skewed facts make its way into news sources, and the way you conduct your business shouldn’t be any different. SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday tackles the process of converting raw data to actionable numbers, using valid statistics to effectively make a point without compromising data integrity.

Separate Social Media or Do You Live Your Brand? — Marketing Pilgrim

Only 13% of small business owners maintain a separation between their work and personal social media presences, with only 5% not working weekends and nearly none at all banning cell phones from private spaces such as the dinner table or bedroom. While we all struggle with being constantly tuned in and tapped on to a frenetic data-intensive world, small business owners often don’t have the luxury of putting “my views are my own and not those of my company or employer” disclaimers on their online movements. Do you live your brand both online and off? How do you balance the two?

In an era where privacy norms seem to be eroding every day with the advent of up-to-the-minute social media, Spain is taking an interesting tack with regard to the “right to be forgotten.” A Spanish court is asking Google to eliminate information from about 90 private users from its index. While El Goog is fighting the petition, the case raises some interesting questions: on one hand 75% of Europeans polled wanted the right to delete personal information at any time, this movement would potentially allow private users the power to pull down information displayed on third-party sites such as news sources and Wikipedia. What do you think?

5 Low-Budget Ways to Distribute Your Blog Content — WordStream

Do you have a well-optimized blog with great content, but are having some trouble pulling in eyeballs? WordStream’s Elisa Gabbert shares five handy ways to spread awareness of your work, from savvy utilization of social media to tactics as simple as a well-crafted email signature.

Interview with Robert Sheinbein About Creating Quality Content — Graywolf’s SEO

Content provider and all-around creative Internet mogul Robert Sheinbein talks in-depth about the importance of crafting dynamic, interesting content for your website, communicating instructions to writers with regard to tone, style and end goals and a solid floorboards-up keyword plan.

4 Tips For Success With Seasonal, Local SEO — Search Engine Land

It’s back-to-school time, and if you’re a savvy backpack or school supply retailer you’ll have gotten your optimization ducks in a row ahead of time to capitalize on the incoming demand. Whether you’re in the business of firecrackers, Christmas trees or haunted houses, this article is an excellent resource on ways to plan ahead to get the most out of your business’s seasonality.

Optimizing social in support of search marketing — B to B Online

Mike Jarvinen, VP Marketing Strategy at the Search Agency, gives some pointers on “strong social media outreach” and its importance to organic and paid search. When performed correctly, a strong social media platform can help build trust in a brand. Among his tips: prominently-displayed authoritative content such as studies and lists of associations are a big boon to a brand’s impact.

Think Blogging is a Dead-End for Your Small Business? — Search Engine Journal

If you’re a small business interested in online expansion, you may be wondering if setting up and regularly maintaining a blog is worth the effort. While the motivations for blogging can be radically different from establishment to establishment, the end goal is the same: to target your customers. This article discusses the many advantages of blogging and how to avoid some common pitfalls such as failing to consistently update with fresh content, analyze the blog’s metrics or respond to user feedback.

How to Tweet From Your Archives Without Pissing People Off — Graywolf’s SEO

Do you have a large backlog of interesting, pertinent archived content that you want to expose to new users or followers? In this handy how-to, Michael Gray explains the ins and outs of grooming your list of selections to create a sleek and multi-faceted campaign to get your older content maximum exposure.

IT and SEO Teams Should Work Together — SEO Chat

All too often SEO and IT professionals end up at odds throughout the course of a project, slowing work progress and creating discord in the team. SEO Chat’s Terri Wells gives examples of some common causes of this friction, as well as tips on how to resolve the problem and create well-functioning team in which all facets collaborate and respect each other.

Bing Unfolds a New Set of Finance Tools — ProNet Advertising

If you’re a NASDAQ news junkie who’s considering making the switch to Bing, you’re in luck. The Microsoft-driven Google competitor has unveiled a whole new suite of financial tools designed to allow you to keep track of social stock conversations, display recent news stories applicable to your researched companies and share decisions to buy, sell or trade via a Facebook widget. By aligning itself with well-established third parties in the sphere such as Seeking Alpha and StockTwits.com, Bing has created a hithero-unseen conglomerate of resources designed to get you every bit of financial information you could ever ask for in a single service. Click through to get the goods on how this social search bigwig is turning its focus to Wall Street.