Tools reviews are not easy: You can test usability )based on your own preferences( and compare the feature set with what you have seen so far. However, if you want to dig deeper and compare the complex data and come to well-grounded conclusions, you need to be careful. There's no way you can get free [...] Author information Ann Smarty Community and Branding Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas Ann Smarty is the blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas .

The battle of the brands became as unpredictable as the game of football itself last Sunday night during the Super Bowl. Just as great victors rise above and capitalize on the unforeseen circumstances of the game, so too did one of America's oldest brands. 100 year-old Oreo proved that successful old dogs are constantly learning new tricks. .

I've been offering SEO workshops in Boston for several years now. While I know that eight hours isn't enough time for someone to learn all there is to know about SEO )I've been in this industry for 13 years and I'm still learning!(, I try to give as complete an overview as I can so [...] Author information Nick Stamoulis Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a full service Boston SEO firm .

Of the major brands pulling out the big bucks for air time during the Super Bowl, who had the most potential to come out a big social media winner? Prior to the game, SHIFT marketing put several brands head to head tournament style to determine which brand had the best social following. Tech brands like .

Late Friday afternoon, Twitter began notifying account holders that their account security had been compromised and their passwords had been changed. In an article posted to the official Twitter blog, Bob Lord, Director of Information Security, said that unusual access patterns led to a discovery of a live attack in progress. That attack was shut down immediately, .

Website bounce rate, or the number of visitors who arrive on your site and hit the "Back" button without ever visiting another page of your content, often gets the short end of the stick by webmasters. Certainly, in many cases, there are more glamorous analytics metrics to attend to, including the results of highly useful [...] Author information Sujan Patel Sujan Patel is the co-founder of Single Grain, an SEO Agency based in San Francisco, CA.

If fan love and great vibes have anything to do with the outcome of Super Bowl XLVII, then Search Engine Journal is ready to reveal it's pick for this year's NFL Championship Team. We are taking it quarter by quarter based on the numbers of loyal fans on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube. 1st Quarter .

The cost of everything seems to be on the increase these days, with Superbowl ads being no exception. Sure if you are like me, Superbowl ads are one of the main highlights of the game but with a 30 second spot going for over $4 million dollars, one has to ask themselves is it really worth it? The short answer is "yes for some while no for others." Author information David Wallace David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank ,

People love doom and gloom and this is perhaps why so many blog posts and articles this year have pronounced the end of SEO at some point or another. It seems to be all the rage to point out how SEO is somehow no longer reliable or valid, or to whine about how Google is [...] Author information Jeet Agrawal Jeet Agrawal is the co-founder of GetLinksPro , a small SEO company working with several top internet marketers and SEO companies. You can follow Jeet on Twitter .

The Google Penguin update has changed the link building process forever. Gone are the days when it was easy to rank for desired keywords by building tons of links using exact keywords as the anchor text. In the wake of Penguin, uncertain exactly where the thresholds and ratios are. Just how well distributed should our [...] Author information Pratik Dholakiya Pratik Dholakiya is a Lead SEO Strategist at E2M Solutions,

In the ongoing effort to pass the SEJ torch, Search Engine Journal currently hiring a new Managing Editor to take over the role of running the day to day at Search Engine Journal. Love blogging, building relationships and following the world of search engines? Do you have what it takes? Search Engine Journal, a community-focused, [...] Author information Loren Baker Loren Baker is the Founder of Search Engine Journal and remains an Advisor to SEJ.

Is your business providing the most responsive customer service possible? Consumers are making decisions every day based on social media interactions. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter aren't just for brand exposure and marketing. These two-way communication tools are becoming the option of choice for customers who have issues or questions. This infographic, produced by .

Your brand is off to a great start with a professional design and a unique look, but until you've got it backed up with quality content, it's going nowhere. An empty brand that doesn't deliver is worthless. You need a brand that is full of useful, quality content that will ensnare potential clients and convince them [...] Author information Brian Taylor Brain Taylor is the VP, Business Development at Forix SEO in Portland, OR.

Last week, Global Web Index released its December 2012 study of Active Social Platform Usage. As expected Facebook remains on top with over 50% of global internet users actively engaged on Facebook each month. The jaw-dropper of the report is that the Google Plus )G+( network has surpassed Twitter in number of active monthly users. .

For the last several months there has been a great deal of discussion of negative SEO, what it is and how to counteract it. Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam team, talks about how Google is addressing negative SEO and explains how the Disavow Links tool works. Cutts specifically addresses the concerns of local .

SEO can be challenging for small businesses. They must compete for the same market share against larger brands that often have more prestige, brand recognition, and consumer affinity. That doesn't mean that organic search is out of reach for small businesses as a powerful inbound marketing channel with high potential for return. In order to [...] Author information Marc Purtell Head of SEO at MediaWhiz Marc Purtell is director of SEO at MediaWhiz,

This week, I got a chance to try out BuzzBundle, a new social media tracking and management tool from Link-Assistant.com. Checking out the site, the product does seem to promise quite a few features; some I'd seen offered by competitors, but others were new to me. The feature concerning Competition and keeping watch on links, [...] Author information Laura Cruz Marketing Consultant at Red Spark Inc Laura Cruz is the Business Development Manager for Search Engine Journal.

At the end of the year, two things tend to happen: You look back over the past year to evaluate its lessons, and you try to predict the future. You can combine these two processes by taking the lessons and patterns of the past and applying them to the future, if you can extrapolate the [...] Author information Jayson DeMers Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom , a Seattle-based SEO agency, as well as Crackerize.com , a lyrics-humor website.

Have you ever gotten a Facebook friend request from something other than a person? I have' several times' recently. There are countless businesses operating in Facebook as user profiles rather than pages. In the early days, those enterprising business owners that could see serious potential in Facebook had no option but to launch a profile for their .

WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, particularly with Internet marketers and SEOs. Its a great system that is easy to use and provides a huge amount of flexibility. Here are some advanced techniques to give your site that extra push: Check Your HTML Semantic Structure The power of WordPress, cheap or free [...] Author information Ilan Nass Lead Marketing Strategist at Fueled Ilan Nass is the founder of Taktical Solutions ,