Murdoch in talks with Microsoft for Bing listings

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch's efforts to change the way his content is distributed online are continuing, with a deal reportedly in the works to make News Corp content searchable only by Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Greg Jarboe, writing at Search Engine Watch, asserts that the deal would require Murdoch's content to be actively de-listed from Google News, which would make search engine optimization (SEO) efforts on behalf of News Corp websites an exercise in frustration. Bing's market share is a small fraction of Google's.

Jarboe cites a Hitwise study which shows that a little more than 16 percent of visitors to newspaper websites arrive there via Google, making that search engine by far the biggest single referrer to newspaper sites.

Search engine optimization (SEO) experts say that Murdoch's dissatisfaction with Google News and its ilk is understandable, but that erecting stronger pay walls around content would be a disastrous overreaction. With print readership drying up rapidly, SEO professionals say that making online content more difficult to access would be suicidal.

http://www.brafton.com

Service Launched to Teach Online Business Owners how to do SEO

Online business owners can now post free queries about how to do SEO for their websites. Online marketing has become a crucial part of most businesses and seo is very important for getting traffic from search engines.

A free informative resource has been in development for a lot of time. It has finally gained full steam and has lots of free information on various aspects of seo. There is information on various important subjects like forum marketing, classified ads and other types of promotions that are required by business owners.

“Web optimization is one of the most important things that an online business owner needs to do in order to propel his online business to new heights. If done correctly, it can result in increased traffic and better sales,” said Jack, owner of a website that gets leads for various law firms.

“The service is primarily aimed at US, Canadian and European businesses. But we are providing consultation to various clients in Asia too”, said Giuseppe Pisaniello, Owner of weboptimizationseo.com that is running the free seo information resource for business owners.

The users have an ability to post comments on the comment forms that appear with every post. Free queries can be posted in those forms. “I am personally responding to every query in detail and offering the best solution for a business owner’s problem. They are free to contact me and ask any question. I am replying to every question about various traffic and seo issues faced by online business owners,” said Giuseppe. Times have never been so good for business owners.

http://www.techienews.co.uk

YouTube Caption Feature and SEO

Google just launched a new feature to automatically caption videos. This move was targeted to help people with hearing disability participate more effectively in online video content. SEO experts are now seeing a new avenue to improve their rankings. Ken Harrenstien, the software engineer who designed this feature is deaf himself. Harrenstien noted that he was unable to use most of the video content available today and this feature was bound to help others just like him.

Though the feature in itself is still in its nascent stages the video scripts that now get associated with a video will help give YouTube content a robust presence online. The captions will get indexed on search engines, and the relevancy of video search results will improve as a result.

As of now, few videos online enjoy the companionship of captions. Most videos would rely on just the title and some meta-data for search engine indexing. With captioning, now video can be looked at almost like traditional text content. For example, if a video on cooking is posted, it is likely that words like meat, vegetables etc show up on content. Unlike just relying on the title that says “xyz recipe” the actual video script now will enhance its ranking and relevance to a certain keyword.

Google will be using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to generate English subtitles. Though initially it is said to be limited in performance, it is said to improve in stages as time goes by. YouTube traffic could potentially rise much higher than its current levels as a result. Lot of work has been going on with the image search lately, and this addition to video search could be a vital avenue for internet marketing and SEO of any form.

This automated generation of captions will first be applied to thirteen partner channels. Currently they include channels like UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and some Google and YouTube channels.

Through another feature called Automatic Timing, users can manually add captions to their video. To carry out this task, users will need to supply a text file with the script that is used in the video. It is different from traditional subtitle files (.srt files) in the sense that it does not need to contain any timing information. Google will automatically synchronize the words with the spoken data in the video.

With Google embroiled in anti-trust cases around the globe, this feature certainly does help make Google look less evil than it is made out to be.


http://trak.in

What Are Meta Tags and Why Are They Important?

A “meta tag” is a common phrase that new web designers generally have to deal with as soon as they sit down to create a website. It’s an essential part of building a website that many non-web-tech people don’t know much about. In a nutshell, a meta tag is a HTML or XHTML code that provides meta data about a webpage. Meta data is basic information about the contents of a webpage.

There are different kinds of meta tags or meta elements which are used for websites. They determine the headers which are sent before sending out the details of the website and also rules out the name and content of each header. Meta elements also signify the keywords significant to the website or document or the state or location that is target area.

These tags are also employed in search engine optimization and are not visible to the viewers. They carry information about the website which enables the search engines to categorize and sort out different websites.

By using meta elements effectively it’s possible to get good search engine ranking. It enable the webmaster to control the way by website will appear during search results. The website with a proper description is more likely to attract visitors. Success lies in proving brief and to the point description about the site.

The meta keywords tag is also of the important determining factors in page ranking. It contains the list of keywords which the Webmaster considers important to each page. Effective use of keywords helps to get a proper ranking on search engines. The best way is to go through each web page carefully and then select ten keywords that best represent the contents of the site. Too many unnecessary keywords leads to incompatible search results and using words may lead to incomplete message.

These days the meta keywords tag has lost its popularity after some web designers started using unnecessary keywords to attract traffic to their web pages. Some popular search engines like Google banned websites which uses such ploys.

Among all the meta elements which are used, the most important decisive element for search engine ranking is description attribute. The Meta description is the first piece of information about the website which one gets while using a search engine.

It carries the description of the contents of the webpage which pops up during a search engine query. This kind of description is helpful when search engine cannot provide the website’s content as a description.

The other popular meta element is language attribute which helps the search engine to figure out the language used by the website. With a mega tag like robot attribute, the search engine spiders can index a webpage and follow the given links.

Meta tags help to classify a website so that it’s visible during search results. These tags provide the search engines with key information about the website which helps the user to find the concerned site quickly. Without the tags, search engines, that go by the information entered by the user, will give inappropriate results without proper ranking and organization.

XML is Transforming the Internet

When the internet was first introduced, all websites were written in HTML. HTML was the only programming language used to describe and display data on the World Wide Web. It was simple and fairly easy to learn. As time progressed, programmers started to realize that they were being stymied by HTML. Web designers wanted to be able to describe data more effectively. This need for a better way to deal with data resulted in the development of a new specification called XML.

What is XML? XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. So, just like HTML, XML is a markup language. A markup language is any language that is used to describe or define information and text. XML is not a substitute for HTML. It is to be used in conjunction with HTML.

HTML focuses on describing how data or text is supposed to be displayed. The XML language does something totally different. XML describes what the data is. So, XML is not something that is apparent on a web page, because it does not actually do anything. As information and data presented on the World Wide Web became more complex, XML was invented to effectively structure, store, and send this information.

What makes XML truly unique is that there are no predefined tags like we have with HTML. All of the tags used in HTML have already been defined, such as the paragraph tag, the header tag, and all the various style tags. XML is not defined. You can make your own tags!

So, the question is, why do we need XML? Why do we need a more versatile specification like XML to describe data? After all, HTML works fine if used properly, so why do we need XML? Well, the answer is simple. XML is a device independent, cross-platform language.

This is extremely important, because people are now using a wide variety of gadgets to connect to the internet, as almost every electronic device on the market now comes equipped with email and internet access. Cell phones, palm tops, computers installed in automobiles, they all have built-in web access. Each of these devices display text and graphics differently, and utilize different platforms and a variety of web browsers.

As a result, someone using a cell phone to access a certain web site may not be able to view the data on that website properly because the browser running on that cell phone might not be able to properly display the HTML. The platforms that run on some of these newfangled products and devices are simply not 100% compatible with HTML.

XML solves this problem by making sure that the most important data on your website can be displayed across all of these different platforms. This is what makes XML so valuable. The other important features of XML is that it enables data to be exchanged between incompatible systems, and because XML files are plain text files, basically anyone using any system can view the contents of the text file.

So, if you are a programmer, you need to learn to use XML for describing, storing, and sending data on the web. With so many different means available to connect to the internet, you should learn to use programming languages like XML.

XML Tutorials,XML Tips

Google Adds Twitter Accounts to Press Center

Earlier this year we wrote a post about how excited Google was becoming about Twitter and how quickly they were creating new Twitter accounts.

Well Google has taken their endorsement of Twitter to a new level this week, with the addition of a directory of their official Twitter accounts to the Press Center.

I discovered the new directory when I visited the Press Center today and was greeted with the message:

“New! Browse our official list of Google’s Twitter accounts”.

Clicking on the related link brings up a comprehensive list of 87 official Twitter accounts representing almost all of Google’s products and tools, as well as many of the Google regions worldwide. When I viewed it, the Twitter directory page hadn’t even been cached yet, indicating that it’s pretty new.

Prior to this new directory, Google’s Twitter accounts were being added to the related post on the official Google blog, but the new directory lists 16 more Twitter accounts, making it the authority now.

Google’s decision to create such a large number of Twitter accounts and link to them in such a prominent location highlights their continued infatuation with Twitter. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were dating with a view to forming a long term partnership.

How Many Links Does It Take To Get To The Middle Of Google Page One?

Everyday it seems, people are asking me the optimum numbers of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google.

My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer.

Answer: You need more inbound links – of equal or higher quality – than what your competitors have.

Albert Einstein argued that any mathematical formula that required pages of calculations did not contain within it “the mind of God”.

So when Albert Einstein developed E=mc2, then Einstein had fulfilled the promise of a simple formula that could encompass the brilliance of God.

When people wonder as to how many inbound links they might need to acquire in order to rank in the Top 4 of Google’s search results or even the Top 10 of Google’s SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not.

I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone.

Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal.

No one can truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until one has take the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google’s SERPs.

* You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword.
* You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google’s search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo both tend to understate the actual link counts. While Yahoo will show you more than what Google does, they also show a number of “no consequence” links in their results.)
* You need to look at the quality of a few of the pages that offer links to the URLs in the search results.

This is not an easy process to undertake. I have done it before, but the best you can hope for is a “snapshot” of what is out there, and therefore, what you need to accomplish.

Note: If Wikipedia turns up in your search query, few people with small budgets will ever be able to dislodge Wikipedia in the search results. What they make up for in a small number of inbound links, they more than make up for with links from dozens or hundreds of PR4, PR5 and PR6 pages. Wikipedia is the king of Internal Linking, and they use that to a great degree to rank extraordinarily high in Google’s search listings.

Your analysis should seek to uncover how many links a page has to it.

As a general rule of thumb, Google will show you less than 1% of the existing number of links for a web page. Yahoo will sometimes show closer to 5% of the existing number of links for a web page, but they will not show you the highest quality of those links.

So, as you strive to gain a “snapshot” picture of the playing field, you want to take Google’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 100. Then you want to take Yahoo’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 20, then cut the number in half to acknowledge the number of worthless crap links they have in their database. Once you have achieved these two numbers, then I tend to call the truth “somewhere in the middle”.

With your “somewhere in the middle” number in hand, then you need to look at the quality of links to a few of those search listings, to get an idea of whether those links exist on higher quality pages or simply junk pages.

If those links are on junk pages, then the goal could be achieved by just working the numbers. But if there are a lot of high PageRank pages in the mix, then whatever number is in your hand, should be multiplied, perhaps 100-fold, to overcome the quality of pages that link to your competitors.

If you get the idea that my simple formula leads to a complicated answer, then you are right.

All of the numbers that I have included in my sample formula are based on rough speculation, as the “snapshot” offers you your best hope of understanding the challenge in front of you.

While the number of inbound links may be relatively easy to determine, the link quality is a factor that is really hard to pin down.

* If you determine that you only need 300 inbound links to rank with the big boys, you may be right.
* Your 300 inbound links number should also be quantified against the number of links that Google will count worthy, so you may need 1200 links to get 300 links that Google will deem worthy. This calculation depends more on the “quality of your content”, rather than the “quantity of your content”.
* When all is said and done and your 300 Google-worthy links have not yet put you on page one, then you know that the quality of the links pointing at your competitors is greater than the quality of the links pointing to you.

If you were hoping for an easy answer, I am sorry that I could not help you with that.

But with this explanation of the challenge, you may be better prepared to answer the big question, the question that is really on your mind:

=== Are my hopes of achieving good rankings in Google within my reach?

I tend to throw “worry” to the wind and just start working. I don’t worry if I can afford to do it or not. I simply start doing, and I know that in one month, one year or five, I will have built enough value in my website that my competitors are going to be the ones who are trying to figure out if they can unseat me!

http://www.sitepronews.com