I met up with Ralph Wilson at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference a couple of weeks ago and had a great time as always doing interviews. Ralph Wilson’s Web Marketing Today is one of the oldest (since 1995) most respected web marketing resources in the world and as one of Ralph’s hand-picked writers for SEO I feel very privileged to work with him.

In the following interview, Ralph and I discuss the advantages of blogging for building valuable links and reputation online.

Note: we had some trouble with the recording device so you might notice Ralph looking sternly at his camera occasionally… that was to make sure it was still recording We had to re-record parts of this interview about 4 times.

The Los Angeles Times reports German researchers, through the help of Google Earth, have discovered that 2 out of 3 cows point North.

Using Google Earth, the researchers studied more than 300 herds of cattle from around the world. Of the 8510 cows they observed, two thirds of them had aligned themselves to face magnetic north while grazing or resting.

This is the first discovery of large land mammals to have this built-in compass. Other animals such as birds and most bees have a similar trait to aid with migration.

So, if you ever find your self lost out at the farm, take a look at the near by cows to help guide you safely home.

Is there no end to lawsuits against Google? On Tuesday Judah Klausner, an inventor from San Francisco, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Verizon, LG, Citrix Systems, Comverse Technology, and Embarq.

Klausner’s company, Klausner Technologies, filed a patent back in 1992 for “visual voicemail”, a way to apply a graphical means of interacting with voicemail messages, similar to the use of e-mail.

Back in June, Klausner had a similar lawsuit settled against Apple, AT&T, and eBay (Skype) over its “visual voicemail” features on iPhone devices.

Verizon apparently had anticipated the lawsuit from Klausner and two weeks ago filed their own lawsuit in US District Court, to have the inventor’s patent declared invalid.

In an article published on Reuters Tuesday Jim Smith, a Verizon spokesman stated: “We anticipated Klausner’s action. We are seeking a declaration that Klausner’s visual voicemail patent is invalid and that Verizon’s system does not infringe the patent in any event.”

The latest lawsuit is just a series of suits filed by Klausner dating back to the first in 2005 against AOL.

According to ABC 9 Eyewitness News, Yahoo has applied for a huge state tax break to help them setup shop in La Vista NE.

In order to qualify for the tax breaks Yahoo would have to create at least 50 jobs with an average salary of at least $68,700, and invest $100 million over a four year period.

The Application for these tax breaks is no guarantee of Yahoo’s plans to build in Nebraska. Its interesting that with all the financial trouble Yahoo seems to be having, that they may be willing to move forward with such a huge development.

Last week’s Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose was awesome! The content was exceptional – a cut above previous conferences – and the parties were a blast. To drive all of this home I invite you to check out the photos from the conference that I posted a few minutes ago.

A number of the photos include the following SEOs that you may know: John Carcutt, Darrell Long, Matt McGee, Andy Beal, Lisa Barone, Loren Baker, Leif Nissen, David Snyder, Jeff Quipp, Jennifer Osborne, Jeremiah Andrick, Daron Babin, Chris Boggs.

There are more photos to come too but for now enjoy!

Google Dance 2008 was, as usual, a great time and I felt it was time to share the festivities with the rest of the world that can’t make it and may just be a little curious about Google’s headquarters. So here we go, welcome to Google Dance 2008:

I hope I can count on seeing you at Google Dance 2009! Just sign up for Search Engine Strategies San Jose when it comes around and in addition to learning about web marketing you will enjoy some great parties (that includes the spectacular Search Bash!).

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

A few months ago I wrote an article about 13 ways a webmaster can go about building links to their site. One of these ways was through the use of directory submissions.

There are many reasons why you may consider a directory submission. You could be trying to build your brand, focused on links for organic rankings, or simply want to drive traffic to your site. Below we will focus on the link building and organic ranking aspect of directory submissions.

There are countless directories out there these days, some are free, some are paid, and many are garbage. If you decide to build links to your site using online directories, there are some things you will want to consider before spending your hard earned money. Read more…

Possibly the most exciting post for me was from Oliver Marks at ZDNet . Here is a company that is thinking outside the box and developing an alternate interface for search on the internet; it involves returning results based on aggregate sets of information. Freebase Parallax is a fascinating peak into the future and it utilizes the strongest attributes to browse and explore data, a sort of marriage between Google and Wikipedia. This article has been placed under the Google section because I predict they will quickly snatch up this company and its revolutionary approach.

“Still technically in alpha, Freebase will be the underpinnings of many future companies – some would say this approach is the future of the entire Internet. Read more…

Tuesday, Microsoft announced a new plug-in for Outlook 2007. Information Week reports on this collaborative effort between Microsoft Research and Office Labs. The plug-in targets email overload and “uses various algorithms to automatically identify the importance or urgency of e-mail messages delivered into an Outlook 2007 in-box.”

It will allow automatic prioritizing of emails, and allow user to pause email delivery.

“Email Prioritizer affixes e-mail with between zero and three stars to represent the urgency or importance of a given message. The program uses a number of algorithms that take into consideration things like the name of the sender and whether the receiver is on the “To” line or the “Bcc” line of an e-mail to determine priority, though at this point Microsoft isn’t forthcoming with a full list of exactly what Email Prioritizer takes into consideration.

“Users can also set e-mail priorities manually by changing or assigning a star ranking themselves. These user settings can inform automatic prioritization: for example, if someone always sets e-mails from his manager to three stars, those e-mails will eventually begin to arrive already bearing the three stars.

Email Prioritizer also comes with a “do not disturb” feature that allows users to tweak Outlook’s settings so that no new e-mails arrive until set periods of time between 10 minutes and four hours have passed.

Office Labs is one of a number of public-facing Microsoft “labs” attached to product groups that Microsoft has created in the past few years, including Live Labs and AdLabs.”

by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating over 10 years of web marketing excellence.

Barry Schwartz reports on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index in Search Engine Land that Google extends its lead in search satisfaction.

Below is the ACSI table showing current scores (August 20^th) and percent change from the previous year.

by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating over 10 years of web marketing excellence.