SEO Meet SMM (Social Media Marketing) was the most information-dense seminar that I attended at SMX Advanced, a multi-day conference geared for advanced web marketing professionals. As a result, it has taken a while to view my footage and pick out all of the best tips to share with you. The SEO Meet SMM seminar was paneled with an all-star cast of Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel and Cindy Krum. Between these three incredibly bright people, and my own experience and research I have put together this whitepaper on how to use social media marketing (SMM) to your advantage. I believe this is the most current (timely), accurate and cutting edge information available for those who want to start marketing in this field. Read more…

I have been hard at work writing a white paper that we will be releasing today on do it yourself social media marketing. As a result, my blogs have been rather infrequent – my apologies. Here, however, is a quick list of some of the articles that have piqued my interest over this past week and I expect you will find worthy of a read as well:

• Rand Fishkin posted a hair-raising live example of the repercussions of a Google penalty on a real estate agent that had been using manipulative linking practices.
• What to do when your company Wikipedia page goes bad: reputation management is a hot topic
• Social media and user generated content in the Spanish space: coverage from AdTech Miami
• Andy Beal’s blog shares an interesting fact on how un-linked images appear to be counting as links in Yahoo!’s algorithm according to Yahoo Site Explorer.
• Compete.com now offers keyword analysis by Jeremiah Owyang
• Facebook is acquiring widget startups in a manner that is very Google-esque and Josh Catone of Read/Write Web wrote a great article discussing the virtual ‘Facebook Economy‘.

Lastly her is an interesting interview with Eric Peterson, web analytics guru. Note the background noise is a little annoying.

The big search engines are spending money like crazy these days. From the many new multi-billion dollar acquisitions taking place over the past several months, to the second $600 Million data centers under construction by Google.

Microsoft is also expanding further with a 6000 employee research and development center currently under way in Shanghai according to Forbes. Read more…

The spring of 2009 will see the grand opening of a new $600 million data center for Google in Council Bluffs Iowa. News was announced yesterday by Gov. Chet Culver and Google in Council Bluffs.

This announcement comes just 6 weeks after an announcement for a $600 million data center in Pryor Creek OK, expected to open a year sooner in Spring of 2008.

Three parcels of land totaling 1185 acres will be used to house the massive project including two facilities, and once completed it is estimated that Google will employ 200 workers at the new location.

With all these new expansions one must wonder, is Google simply beefing up its current infrastructure, or are there plans for something bigger in the future? Only time will tell.

According to the Globe and Mail, Microsoft has taken a step back and will now allow for third party search applications to be used in the new Windows Vista operating system.

Microsoft’s decision came a week before a government review of Microsoft’s 2002 antitrust settlement compliance demanding the use of such third party apps. Read more…

A company by the name of CambrianHouse got some free press by getting 1000 pizzas to Google employees on the Google campus – bypassing security. So it looks like CambrianHouse has set the bar on outrageous press stunts in the social media industry. Now… I wonder who will try to one-up them? I look forward to finding out. Check out this video, it is a bit long but a lot of fun.

In the first week of June Google launched a program called “Google Gears” that expands the already impressive capabilities of Google Reader (Google’s free news reader) to allow offline viewing. Here is a quote from Google’s related blog posting:

“Now, you can read these updates whether you’re on or offline. It’s easy to read today’s financial news from the New York Times on the train, or catch up on your favorite blog while on a plane 35,000 ft. above the Atlantic. Read more…

Today Google announced that YouTube is being launched in 9 new countries in their own native languages. The countries are the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Brazil.

At the moment the roll out will provide each site with localized (country-specific) content such as featured videos, director videos, and promotions. Over time each site will feature more and more localized content as each site draws in more active participants.

This update is seen as both a necessary move from a growth perspective (why not expand into different languages?!) as well as a competitive one; some countries have their own rival brand of localized video sharing sites that, over time, could jeopardize YouTube’s entry potential if it doesn’t get its foot in the door immediately.

This week the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced an addition to Google’s spam reporting form for people to report sites that appear to be buying paid links in order to influence search engine rankings. This addition ties in with Matt Cutt’s none-too-subtle warning at a recent SMX Advanced interview with Danny Sullivan. Matt essentially reinforced to the audience that buying links is against Google’s guidelines and that those who are buying links may feel the heat soon as Google tries to patch this chink in its armor (see the video below).

The SMX Advanced conference was jam-packed with info that I know many site owners and webmasters who could not make the show are dying to see. There have been a large number of summaries published from other attendees including those who blogged in real time; great resources for truly detailed reports. In my case, I want to provide StepForth readers with a concise list of the news and tips that really stood out from the rest. In part one of the SMX Advanced summary I discussed duplicate content issues and some other tips that I felt deserved immediate attention. In part two, I will tackle tips for efficient marketing and search engine optimization and a list of the top SEO tools including my own favorites. Read more…