I came across a video on Twitter yesterday (thanks to user @mypluginplay) and after watching it I learned a few things about LinkedIn (a property where I have a profile but I haven’t researched yet) that were definitely worthy of sharing. Read more…

I was doing some of my daily news digging when I came across the following chart on MarketingCharts.com showing the Share of Ad Spending by Medium as of September 2008. With all of the discussion these days about TV and print advertising suffering during the (brace yourself for the phrase we all hate) economic downturn it will be interesting to compare these numbers to data a year from now. Read more…

Google announced yesterday morning over at the two improvements they have made to the search results. These improvements include more refined results for specific searches, and longer snippets for long tail searches.

Search Refinements

This refinement will allow Google to offer more “related searches” for various queries that users perform. Now when you do a search in Google, at the bottom of the results there is small section of links titled “Searches related to:” These are links to other related searches. Read more…

From what I can gather RedZee should change their mascot to an animal more identified with shiftiness than a cute Zebra. Ever since I wrote “Seeing Red – Search Engine RedZee Reviewed” I have lost count how many people have either thanked me for saving them from spending money fruitlessly at RedZee or have told me they wished they saw my article before they paid for advertising there. But what brings me to mention RedZee today is an email I received from “Abe” (his name has been changed to protect his identity), a RedZee victim who is asking me to help him recoup nearly $1500 USD he spent on the search engine. Interesting, well let’s dig deeper here:

Abe, why are you trying to recoup your spend?

“After a week and several hundred “hits” I realized the service was a scam because I had no conversions and my tracking software showed that all my the “visitors” from RedZee landed on the same page and stayed less than 1 second.”

And what can I do to help?

“I was wondering if you can help me by providing your expert opinion to my credit card company regarding RedZee’s Referral Spam practices that have resulted in my receiving thousands of ‘hits’ but no conversions over the past 6 weeks.” Read more…

A big thanks to the wonderful Abby Prince from WebProNews for interviewing Matt Cutts explaining what the new Canonical tag is for and why it was created.

Today at the SMX West conference, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced a new tag that will have a major impact on reducing the amount of duplicate content issues found online and it will help website owners reclaim valuable link popularity.

In this article Canonical URL Links by WordPress specialist Joost de Valk he explains the tag and reasoning behind it. I will give a quick synopsis myself below but his article has some more detail if you need it. Read more…

At least a few times a month I get asked various questions about why a search engine ranking looks the way it does.

For example, someone might ask me how they can influence the description and/or title that Google gave their website in their search engine ranking. But easily the most prominent question is “what are those links that show up under some #1 rankings? How can I get those?” Read more…

There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is “How long till I start to see results?” This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.

It doesn’t matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don’t come over night. Read more…

On January 29th Marketing Sherpa is presenting a webinar that we strongly recommend to all of StepForth’s readers called:

The webinar is 90 minutes long and includes a printable report called “Create Content Your Prospects Adore”. All of this is just $97 and if it is anywhere near as good as the “How to Viral Market” webinar StepForth purchased last month then it will be more than worth the investment (yes this is one place we get our training!). Read more…

In the following interview, world renown Internet marketer Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today interviews Ross Dunn from StepForth Web Marketing about Reputation Enhancement and how important it is for businesses of every type on the Internet.