Friday fun. Search for Matt Cutts and Google recommends paid links.

Only on very rare occasions can you say that someone "wrote the book" on a topic of relevance and it jumps from metaphor to accuracy. Tamar Weinberg , a social media strategist and author of 2009's O'Reilly published text: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web , makes a wonderful exception to the rule. An expert trusted worldwide for her experience, opinions and guidance in all things social, Tamar's book on the subject remains a vital,

At a recent SEO conference there was a question asked about getting a geo-local page to rank better for their own specific brand + the location )where they were competing against resellers & aggregators in that vertical(. I was a bit tired at the end of the day, so I am not sure if I got my point across well enough there...so I figured it would make sense to follow up here.

Marketers often rely on a facade. If marketing and advertising were truly transparent few marketers would ever be seen as heroes ;( When information didn't spread as widely it was easy for one public relations hero to scam one country into bombing and destroying another for the benefit of their client. Distortions and misinformation can work in the short run, but with the web people are connected all the time and the memory is deep.

Since 2003, Anita Campbell is perhaps best known as the Founder and Executive Editor of Small Business Trends , a website bringing over 1 Million readers annually a clear focus on small business news , trends, advice and everything small business. A multi-award-winning site )including a 2010 SEMMY Award (, Small Business Trends has remained a dependable and provocative resource of relevant, small business-related content where expert opinions fuse into passionate,

BOTW emailed a coupon out good for all of October which saves you 20% off your listing fees. If you do the one-time submission the price is $299, but this coupon will save you $60, making it a $239 one-time submission fee. Save 20% on all Web, Blog, & UK Directory Submissions Discount offer and Promo Code " SAVE20 " is valid through October 2010 and only applicable to the BOTW Directory )botw.org(, BOTW Blog Directory )blogs.botw.org( and BOTW UK Directory )botw.org.uk(.

Forbes AdVoice , a new Forbes editorial strategy that does away with the traditional barriers between advertising and editorial content: The pitch is this: We'll sell you a blog, and your content will live alongside that of Forbes' journalists and bloggers. This isn't the "sponsored post" of yore; rather, it is giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand.

Effective marketers leverage marketing channels. Scammers ruin them for everyone else. There is a long line of this on the web... Email was personal, then it was easy to automate & done in bulk. Guest books and blog comments were a way to add value, then they were sources of free links. Links were a signal of relevancy, then they were bought and sold in bulk. As people get burned the web as a whole gets more cynical.

About a year ago my wife and I started to notice Google's increasingly aggressive push into demoting the organic results and extending AdWords ads. Based in large part on that we decided to partner with Geordie Carswell to create a sister site to SEO Book focused on paid search & contextual advertising - PPC Blog. I have been meaning to interview him for a while & just finally got around to it. How did you get into pay per click marketing?

Sometimes when reading TechCrunch I feel like I am watching the History Channel, and that there is a regularly scheduled show called WWII Wednesdays ) or something like that (. Ironically there was even a junk TechCrunch post about killing the hype cycle . But they know the truth on manipulation - they wouldn't have a profitable product without it . So often marketers highlight how *this changes everything* I just saw an article about how the Facebook like button kills SEO,

Google Instant launched. It is a new always-on search experience where Google tries to complete your keyword search by predicting what keyword you are searching for. As you type more letters the search results change. Short intro here: Long view here: Not seeing it yet? You can probably turn it on here )though in some countries you may also need to be logged into a Google account(.

It is no secret that in the past Rand and I have had some minor difference of opinions )mainly on outing(. ;( But in spite of those, there is no denying that he is an astute marketer. So I thought it would be fun to ask him about his background in SEO and to articulate his take on where some of our differences in opinions are. Interestingly, it turns out we shared far more views than I thought! Hope you enjoy the interview. :( Throughout your history in the SEO field,

The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral. Google knows this. Now you do as well. Easy always wins. Take a moment and picture your website or your blog or your product or service in your head right now. Now, think of Google's. Which one is easier? No, you're not a search engine, you're probably a small business owner with a variety of products services, entrepreneur with a business idea, or blogger .

When you think of labor day what comes to mind? For me it is these 2 thoughts lower earnings because few people are online today since almost nobody is online, any hours worked today are me getting ahead of the market ;( Working hard & working long hours can almost be a disease...the web makes it easy to be addicted . But for every person who is putting in hard work trying to help people there is another person selling image . The big issue with the image game is the risks.

No, not like that, but in the good way! :D The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral highlighting one of the most fundamental tips to succeeding online. Have you ever really taken a step back from all the technical SEO stuff and thought about why Google wins? The real reasons why they have mass-market share and why they continue to dominate? It's time you should, because once you understand how to start thinking like Google,

One of the best ways to track Google's strategies is through visualizing & analyzing their acquisitions. Which is what the following image helps you do.

Do you want Google to tell you what you should be doing? Mr. Schmidt thinks so : "More and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. " They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next . ... serendipity"can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically.

Pretty exciting day in search seeing Bing results live on Yahoo! Search results. There were some questions as to what might transfer and what might stay. It seems that generally algorithmically there was roughly a 1 to 1 transfer. Yahoo! is still showing fewer characters in their page titles than Bing does. Site links )listed below some sites( may also use different anchor text. But the core results are the same.

Sigh, not this again. ;( Recently Rand highlighted his surprise at how prevalent search spam is . But the big issue with search today is not the existence of spam, but how it is dealt with. For a long period of time Google spent much of their resources fighting spam manually. That worked when spammers were sorta poor and one hit wonders fighting on the edge of the web & few people knew how search worked.

Jon Glick is one of the leading experts on search, having literally both wrote the code at leading search engines and later becoming an SEO professional. I remember speaking with him in 2004 at the Ghost Bar in Las Vegas and it was perhaps the most fascinating conversation about search I have ever been part of. I have wanted to interview him for years & just recently was able to.