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You typically have to create some number of social interactions to leave the trail of signals of quality to make Google want to trust a site enough to put it in front of a large traffic stream, especially if you are starting a brand new site and are trying to operate within Google's guidelines. As Bob Massa says "search engines follow people."

There are two points in this post that I want to emphasize... First off SEO is an ongoing process. There isn't a magic trick that pushes your site to the top of rankings. It takes work.. Rinse & Repeat. Analyze & Tweak. Secondly there is a great point that if you hire an SEO expert you will get your site in front of the thousand other relevant people in your niche. This is very hard and takes a lot of work. So, you should create Outposts. Creating outposts is part of a content marketing strategy where you distribute your content among various networks to build up multiple sources of traffic... Great quote from Bob Massa explains it perfect!

A couple insights to future Google additions to their ranking algorithm: brands as noise filters and relationship awareness. Exciting stuff....

If you ask Matt Cutts what big SEO changes are coming up he will tell you "make great content" and so on...never wanting to reveal the weaknesses of their search algorithms. Eric Schmidt, on the other hand, is frequently talking to media and investors with intent of pushing Google's agendas and all the exciting stuff that is coming out. In the last 6 months Mr. Schmidt has made a couple quotes that smart SEOs should incorporate into their optimization strategies - one on brands [15], and another on word relationships [16

Have you ever tried to look at your website/blog/etc on a mobile phone? If you have you know it generally renders crappy and takes forever to load. This is a great option for WordPress users to make their blogs iPhone friendly... It is the #2 smart phone now - do you want to turn potential readers away?

Simply put, it's a complimentary theme installed as a plugin on your WordPress blog or website that will format your content with this Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when your visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch.

great insight from GaryV on monetizing your blog / vlog / podcast / etc.

Gary Vaynerchuk sits down today and shows you how he thinks you should approach monetizing your content.

A great starter guide for SEO - if you want to start learning, this guide is a great start.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

An example of bad email marketing...

Let's start with the subject… They used the horribly generic "Newsletter" in their subject. What most people don't realize is the easiest way to fail at email marketing is to use generic, non-descriptive subjects in their emails. A subject must be compelling, brief, and indicate the content of the message. This fails at all three and it doesn't even indicate a brand. This will be passed up in most users' inbox.

This tool is a MUST USE! So quick and convenient for SIMPLE screen casting. If you're doing private stuff for a membership site...probably not the best choice. But, for simple "get the content out there" screen casts...this is a golden boy among all players. The twitter based login and integration means that sharing is an absolute snap because like you I'm sure, my twitter postings end up all over my social profiles/lifestream. Excellent!

Today at Searchology, Google has launched a search results enhancement called "rich snippets" that uses meta data from web pages (from microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and RDF) to display additional details (both content and meaning) about pages in the results. This initial launch supports reviews (with sites such as Yelp) and people (with sites such as LinkedIn). They will be adding more sites and categories over time.

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically over the past few years. The shift is from one of web page optimization and link hounding to content and engagement optimization. In short, search engine optimization and social media are now undeniably intertwined. It has become extremely difficult to achieve any measure of success for important keyword phrases without the use of social media.

From time to time you'll probably want to send a website visitor who tries to access a page that has moved, been deleted, etc to a brand spanking new page of which quite possibly will have the content they were looking for. In this article I'll introduce you to the 301 re-direct, show you how to create one, and you'll see why sometimes just depending on the 404 page isn't practical. I'll also show you various methods to create one by using PHP, ASP, and HTML.

Exact Target also reported that email subscription via text messaging is the fastest growing list-building tactic among marketers. The company predicts that mobile capture - enabling consumers to subscribe to emails via their mobile phones - will increase 500%, more than any other growth tactic in 2009.Marketers also expect the practice of enabling subscribers to share email content with their social networks is expected to increase more than 348% in 2009.

Analyze any text for keyword and keyword-phrase content

What do you think of this? It helps re-purpose existing article and blog content with different variations.

The future of news is playing out. Why even have employed reporters? At some point, the news may be far BETTER when served up by a cadre of individuals. Who knows.

If you use software like aWeber you will get great statistics on whether your email was opened and if they clicked on anything... If you are getting a low read rate chances are you need to modify/tweak your Subject Line.. aWeber does a great job of cleaning out your lists when email becomes inactive.. Checking into these statistics is important to keep your email marketing campaign fresh. This post has some details on "reactivating" your *dead* lists.

How many email messages did you send out in your last campaign? Really? That many? Wow! Now, how many of your recipients actually opened or clicked on your email? Yeah, that's a different story. Remember that with email, size doesn't really matter. Performance is what counts, not just for your email program and its bottom line but also for your sender reputation. A reactivation campaign is the answer here, and it's just as important as any acquisition campaign. It will help you clean out the dead wood, re-energize your list and reclaim some of the money you spent acquiring and engaging those addresses in the first place.

This post is part of a series examining some oft-neglected online customer touch points and exploring ways to optimize them. Today, I'll look at a type of page very similar to thank you pages - the logout confirmation, or logout thank you page.

Great point - Every touch point matters.. Use your logout/login/thank you/subscribe pages for good. Use them as content outposts. Use them to upsell. Use them to pull people back into your site

Search Marketing investment is a staple of an effective web strategy and the "build it and they will come" strategy does not work. No matter how good your product, content, or website is - they will not come unless you invest in your SEM web strategy.

It appears a large proportion of small business owners are still stuck in the "build it and they will come" mentality. The study highlights that most small businesses have developed websites, but have done little more to enhance their online business presence. According to the report, over 59% of small business owners who own websites don't use paid search marketing, and of those, a whopping 90% have never tried it.