The New York Times published an article near and dear to my heart over the weekend about JCPenny manipulating Google results as a result of paid links. Apparently it's news to many people that this kind of activity is taking place. But to those of us who optimize Web sites using "white hat" tactics it is certainly no surprise as we investigate why our competitors out rank us.

YouTube's "Promoted Videos" tool has allowed many marketers to stand out among the thousands upon thousands of videos flooding the web. Keyword-based targeting gives you control over which search terms trigger your video promotion and you only pay only when someone clicks to watch your video. What many people may not be aware of is that when you sign up on YouTube for a Promoted Video account, agree to the Google AdWords Advertising Policies and get accepted,

So you've built a mobile version of your website to target iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users. Congratulations! This can do wonders for creating increases in mobile traffic and subsequent conversions, especially when optimization includes local factors. The next step is to follow the appropriate steps to properly inform search engines of the existence and dimensions of the site: Create Webmaster accounts for Google, Yahoo!,

Claiming and validating local listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo! can drive high-quality, targeted traffic and help your site rank higher within in local search results. It's possible that unclaimed local listings can sometimes outrank claimed listings, however it is vital to claim your business profiles considering it gives you complete control of what is displayed to users and prevents someone else form claiming your profile and reputation.

Developing a winning content strategy is one of the most important aspects of online marketing. It allows organizations to build a level of trust among their consumers, making it easier for them to complete the purchasing process. If done correctly and effectively, content can draw visitors to your site and keep them coming back for more. It can build your brand, win loyalty, improve retention, and close the sale. If done poorly,

Here are the 5 reasons why your brand needs customer testimonial videos ' 1.( Increase brand awareness 2.( User generated and peer reviewed content is trusted and influences purchasing intent 3.( Calls to action inspire and motivate consumers to interact with your brand 4.( Reinforces brand loyalty and helps inspire brand advocates 5.

Today, the Internet is filled with articles, blogs, essays and countless other web pages that contain information about everything under the sun. With the increasing amount of information on the web, it can be very easy for your content to get lost among the masses. To make your content stand out from the rest, you must engage your readers" give them what they're looking for, connect with them and motivate the sales process.

On October 20th I will be hosting a complimentary webinar titled, "International SEO: How to Establish a Global Web Presence with a Localized Feel." During this webinar I will go over best practices for developing an effective global web strategy, and provide key takeaways that will help increase the effectiveness of your overall online marketing strategy for international SEO. Key Points of Interest: Identify the Importance of Localization vs.

Link building continues to be one of the most difficult challenges in an SEO campaign, and this is especially true for enterprise level companies. Companies who want to play by the rules according to search engine best practices have to compete with sites that buy links, spam effectively and use all kinds of grey to black hat methodologies for acquiring links.

Wordpress is one of the most popular open source platforms people are developing on. It's great for blogs and regular websites, making it an amazingly flexible platform. It's easy, intuitive and it has a ton of free plugins that will allow you to address specific SEO goals. Below,

Both Google and Bing offer an area or "Tools" section for webmasters to monitor their site is performance in each of the respective search engines. The value in webmaster tools lies within the available data, and how you go about using it to make smarter decisions moving forward. This chart is a high level comparison of what types of data you can expect to find as a webmaster in each search engine.

Quick, there is a huge change at Google today! Sound the sirens, the SEO sky is falling! Er'wait, how exactly does this new Google Instant functionality change SEO? That's what I was asking myself today as this big to do from Google was announced.

When I started working with Video Optimization and YouTube my curiosity about "added channel features", such as CSS design, caused me to seek out options for branding channels. Initially, I tried to figure out why some YouTube channels had big banners at the top while others did not. After doing some research, I discovered that YouTube channels can be branded by applying for their YouTube Partnership Program.

There's a lot of buzz around mobile apps these days, and for good reason. You can do some pretty amazing things with these native programs, like access nutritional information for chain restaurant menus or get the title of a song playing at the coffee shop simply by holding your phone up to the speaker. The substantial advantage that mobile apps have is they aren't restricted by the limitations of the browser since they are launched directly from your mobile OS,

by Alice Wansi Chen Baidu is the dominant search engine in China. It provides users with a wide range of results and information, including multimedia content )MP3 music, movies, etc,(, and displays it in a well written Chinese language. Baidu is also the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China; however, there are a few things you may still be unaware of. Below I have listed five things you may or may not know about Baidu. Pin-yin.

by Alice Wansi Chen Baidu is the dominant search engine in China. It provides users with a wide range of results and information, including multimedia content )MP3 music, movies, etc,(, and displays it in a well written Chinese language. Baidu is also the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China; however, there are a few things you may still be unaware of. Below I have listed five things you may or may not know about Baidu. Pin-yin.

by Alice Wansi Chen What does BBS )Bulletin Board System( remind you of? Many of you may remember the old school Internet forum system, Bulletin Board System )BBS(, from the 1990s in the US. For those of you who don't, the BBSes are computers that can be dialed into mainly for the purpose of reading messages from and leaving messages to other users, sharing files, and accessing information of general interest.  And although we may think it's a thing of the past,

Hello everyone.  I just wrote my second article in a three part series for SearchEngineWatch.com that talks about how to measure SEO success in 2010 .  In this article I talk about how the recent changes to Google and the data that is now available through Webmaster tools has changed search engine optimization and the way that understand what SEO success is.  Enjoy!

If you really want to rank well in search engines, you need to build inbound links from external, quality sites. Google looks at two sets of factors when assessing a web page â€"  the on page factors, which  are essentially the textual elements existing on a given web page )title tags, Metadata, content body, link text, etc.( â€" and  the off page factors which come from external sites, such as  what other people are saying about you.