Web Design And Investment For Small Business

Many websites include a section or two with the "Ads by Google" above it or below it. These are ads displayed via Google's AdSense. When you do a search on Google and see ads in the search results pages, they are generally AdSense ads.

AdSense - The Yin:

Google's AdSense is programming that "senses" the content of a page or search. It finds keywords on a web page or in a search phrase to determine the subject of the content. It does this by either "reading" the page, or taking a look at the search term that was typed into Google Search. It can "Sense" which ads in the system are relevant to the content or search and display them - thus: "AdSense."

Before ads on a page are displayed, AdSense searches its database of advertisers and finds ads that are associated with keywords on the page or in the search. Now AdSense needs to decide which of the thousands of ads vying for position are actually displayed. To make this decision, AsSense looks at the advertiser's bids for the relevant keywords. The advertisers that have a combination of the highest bid, keyword relevance and best click through get displayed first.

There's a lot of speculation about the value of guest blogging. Many guest blogs don't have the highest of standards, and could be seen as paid links in the eyes of Google, rather than a legitimate way to gain exposure and direct traffic.

In the latest webmaster help video, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts addresses the question of how you can guest blog without it looking like you pay for links.

Cutts clearly specified what makes something look like a paid link campaign via guest blogging as opposed to a genuine guest blog campaign. When you really drill down, the differences are quite obvious.

Here is what generally makes a guest blog post appear to really be part of a larger paid link scheme, according to Cutts.

"Usually there is a pretty clear distinction between an occasional press blog versus someone who's doing a large scale paid link kind of thing," Cutts said. "If you're paying for links, it's more likely that it's an off-topic or an irrelevant blog post that doesn't really match the subject of the blog itself. It's more likely you will see keyword-rich anchor text and that sort of thing."

So what makes a guest blog post seem legitimate?

"It's more likely to be hopefully someone who's expert, there will usually be a paragraph about who the person is and why you invited them to be on your blog," Cutts said. "Hopefully the guest blogger isn't dropping keywords in their anchors nearly as much as these other sorts of methods of generating links."

He said there's clearly overlap between the two, and sometimes Google's web spam team needs to look at those guest blog posts to determine whether it falls under paid links or if it is a great guest blog post that is of value to your blog and you blog's audience. Cutts continued:

Without a doubt, Google's recent changes make performance reporting less accurate. SEO professionals and marketers no longer have the raw data that we once used to measure SEO results. We will need to use different KPIs and trending metrics to approximate the data that is now lost.

However these changes aren't a surprise. It has been widely assumed by the SEO community for some time that this change was going to happen (although few expected it to be so soon).

Google isn't the only company making "secure search" a priority. Browsers such as IE10, Firefox 14+, and Mobile Safari have put measures in place to mask keyword referral data.

Fortunately, many SEO professionals and organizations have been preparing for this eventuality. It starts with having a solid plan in place to report on data that we know historically has a high correlation to the success that we were once able to directly measure.

The good news is, unlike Google's Panda and Penguin updates, this change doesn't affect our approach to optimization for the most part other than performance reporting (with the exception of being able to use analytics data for keyword research).

As Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts has said: "Succeeding in SEO will be the same as it's always been if you're doing it right – give the users a great experience."

Location-based social networking brand Foursquare has rolled out self-serve ads to all advertisers, in an effort to monetize their audience of 40 million users.

Foursquare Ads, which were introduced in July, use a pay-per-action model; advertisers are charged only when a user clicks through to see their business information or checks in at their physical location.

Ads are displayed to people nearby who are searching for relevant information or have visited similar locations. Foursquare won't display ads to users already checked into the business.

Ads appear when users first open the Foursquare app; they may see an ad based on their usage, location and history. Ads may also appear on a search results page.

Local businesses face a specific problem, Foursquare said in their blog post announcement: they want to get people in the door, but tons of people walk by the storefront without coming in.

They've used data acquired over their four years of consumer interactions – and relationships with over 1.5 million claimed businesses – to inform their new advertising offering, they say.

The ad creation process is relatively straightforward. Advertisers are asked to first search for their business, to ensure it's been claimed.

After logging in, advertisers then upload a picture and add content, in the form of a discount offer, tip or review. They can set a monthly budget and control their ads through the Foursquare advertising dashboard, where they can see data on views, spend and actions taken.

Google is expanding its “Shared endorsements” program. Starting in November, your name, photo, comments, and ratings or +1's you’ve given to a brand or local business can show up in both organic search results and in advertisements for that brand or businesss.

"This only happens when you take an action (things like +1’ing, commenting or following) – and the only people who see it are the people you’ve chosen to share that content with," Google explained in its announcement.

Google reminded users with its updated terms that users control how their endorsements are displayed in ads through their settings.

On November 11, Google+ will update its terms of service agreement to clarify how your profile name and photo might be used in Google products, including in reviews and advertising.

“This update to our Terms of Service doesn’t change in any way who you’ve shared things with in the past or your ability to control who you want to share things with in the future,” Google said in its announcement.

If you'd like to check your settings, here’s a couple simple steps:

Sign into your Google account. Go to the "Shared Endorsements" settings page.
You can enable or disable the setting that allows people to see your name and photo in shared endorsements on ads by checking or unchecking the box shown in the following screenshot:

Just days after the validity of the Bing It On Challenge faced serious questions, Microsoft has apparently decided that people have been without marketing pokes aimed at Google and kicked off another of its Bing It On advertising campaigns.

On the Bing It On UK site, you can elect to watch a video where Microsoft takes an actor into the streets of London and does a search test that involves taking "jumpers" from people whenever Bing defeats Google in a challenge.

Which search engine gives better quality results, Bing or Google? We know that many of you would likely answer Google - it's time for that to change! We are delighted to announce that in blind tests, using the UK's most popular web searches, more people picked Bing than Google*. See what happened when we took the Bing It On challenge to the streets of London. You may be surprised by the result!

Why the asterisk? Because the tests, which consisted of a sample size of 1,000 people and took place between December 2012 and June 2013, is based on web results only – stripping out things such as Google's Knowledge Graph and ads.

It appears that Microsoft has spent good marketing money on proving that a some people would select a Bing search result over a Google one, if it was delivered in a vanilla format.

Imagine playing a team sport, where your team could be penalized at any time, but you and your teammates have only a rudimentary idea of what may or may not trigger a penalty or even whether both teams were being held to the same standards. Sound intriguing?

If that appeals to you, you may be an SEO professional. Or an anarchist. Maybe both.
Moz recently published the full results of their 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. SEW previously reported on the initial findings, but I decided to take a look to see if I'd find anything of substance. I thought if nothing else, the input of more than 120 SEO professionals and a scientific approach should be a good starting point.

The report was apparently compiled in two phases: a survey of 129 SEOs, soliciting their impressions and opinions on the importance of various factors and signals, as well as a scientific correlation analysis of over 14,000 keywords.

Here's what the respondents to the survey had to say:

Ranking Factors or Correlation Estimates?

Before we get into the details, let me just say that the first problem I have with this report is that it's poorly named. Calling it a search engine ranking factors report might lead some to believe it details search engine ranking factors. Duh! Wrong!

The report undoubtedly skirts a number of actual ranking factors (and signals), but where it does, it's pure coincidence. What this report describes would be more aptly named the Moz Search Correlations Report.

Now to be fair, the report, and every mention of it, is quite clear on the fact that what it calls out is simply correlation. They aren't presenting it as a listing of actual search engine ranking factors. But the name is misleading. Terribly so.