Google has just updated its "not-so-popular" keyword research tool - Google Trends. For those who may have forgotten about Google Trends , it's basically a tool for finding out how popular search terms are across geographic regions, cities and languages. The addition of a new feature now allows downloading of the graphical chart into a spreadsheet to allow for a better analysis of the search trends for keywords.

When I think of Wordpress blogs and SEO, I generally think of a handful of experts on the subject of Wordpress and SEO oriented plugins; one such person being Joost de Valk. Joost has mindmapped his knowledge on SEO for Wordpress Blogs into a wonderful guide on establishing high rankings via optimizing a Wordpress Blog.

When I think of Wordpress blogs and SEO, I generally think of a handful of experts on the subject of Wordpress and SEO oriented plugins; one such person being Joost de Valk. Joost has mindmapped his knowledge on SEO for Wordpress Blogs into a wonderful guide on establishing high rankings via optimizing a Wordpress Blog.

A while ago we published a post discussing how image hotlinking might be beneficial for your site. Naturally we collectively came to the final conclusion that there is more harm than benefit in other sites hotlinking yours: it can steal your bandwidth; it can result in copyright infringement; it can damage your image search rankings )the discussion previously covered by Seroundtable.com (.

An SEJ Reader send in the following question : What's a Google Sandbox? How long can it last for a brand new site? Is there any way to avoid it? Is it niche specific? Well, let's first start with the theories behind the term "Google Sandbox". It appears webmasters understand it as two a bit different phenomena: "Google Sandbox" is supposed to mean a period of time before a newly launched website is properly indexed and ranked. They say,

My friend Asif Anwar posted an article over at Marketing Pilgrim titled 13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing recently which gives some of his predictions of where search marketing is headed in the future. For the most part, I think his thoughts are probably pretty close. For instance, I, like Asif, believe that search will become more user friendly, more personalized, more local, more natural and so forth. But,

I cannot for the life of me understand why people suggest that intentionally under promising and over delivering is a good way to manage client or customer expectations. Stephan Spencer is one of many who has recently offered this level of advice and suggested that it is good advice for those selling in the SEO business. I however want to call shenanigans on this type of advice. While I believe managing expectations is ultimately extremely important,

360 Enterprises Inc, which is the parent company of TextLinkBrokers.com and SponsoredReviews.com , has acquired HybridSEM.com , an SEO and social media firm headed by Joe Whyte, who has been a contributor to Search Engine Journal. "Access to 360's resources allows HybridSEM.com to scale our services from a niche market to a massive market. I am proud and excited to be working with such talented and energetic industry leaders who share the same innovative vision.

The Google App Engine, the search giant's new platform for building and hosting 3rd party web apps, is blocking applications from integrating with PayPal for payments.  Considering that Google has their own payments system - Google Checkout - is this just an honest mistake, or is there something more sinister going on?  The Washington Post uncovered today that developers making apps that use PayPal for payment handling are encountering a peculiar error.   You see,

Google search engine usage climbed again in May according to Hitwise reporting, moving from 67.90% of US based searches in April 2008 to 68.29% of US based searches in May 2008, up almost 3 percentage points from May 2007. Hitwise also added that Google now accounts for 87% of the searches performed in the UK )between Google.com and Google.co.uk(, which represents a 12% increase compared to May 2007.

Jonathan Hochman kicks off the first SEO Expert Series interview from SMX Advanced in Seattle, arguably the place to be for the greatest SEO expert to attendee ratio. I first met Jonathan, Founder of Hochman Consultants at SES Chicago 2006 and we've remained close contacts since, fighting side by side to oppose the SEO trademark by Jason Gambert . Jonathan is perhaps best known for his flash optimization techniques and championing the SEO article on Wikipedia.

Sending a )good( link request via email is one of the most powerful ways to build links. My good friend and experienced link builder Melanie Nathan has put together an awesome tutorial on manual link building that covers most important link request strategies followed by killer examples. One of the aspects Melanie mentioned and I want to stress out and discuss further is that each site that can potentially link back to you should be treated differently .

As early as now, the Yahoo Board lead by Roy Bostock and Jerry Yang want to make sure that the current Yahoo Board would be re-elected in the coming Yahoo! Annual Meeting happening on August 1. Together with the filing of its definitive proxy statement against Carl Icahn's nominated board slated, the Yahoo Board wrote a letter to its sharehold urging them to uphold the interest of Yahoo by re-electing its current board.

Last week I published an overview of web-based backlink checking tools that are great for anchor text analysis . In the post comments Avi offered me an idea to review available desktop solutions . I've been sitting the whole day downloading, installing,

A common misconception is that your job search starts once you decide you want to make a career change. In reality, there are simple things you should do on a regular basis to position yourself to be successful in your job search whenever that time comes. Given our industry is experiencing dramatic growth in SEO jobs ,

I daily browse tens of webmaster forums and one recent tendency I couldn't help noticing is the astonishing number of threads talking about sudden decrease in Google search traffic. So here is a quick list of possible reasons this might have happened with some notes of how to handle the situation and how to tell if that's what actually happened: 1. You've been penalized )most obvious one considering Google's latest aggressive punishing policy(.

My post with my book reviews in April this year was so well received that I decided to continue with this and write another review. I do not plan to limit myself to reviews of pure SEO and SEM/PPC related books and will cover books that are related to online marketing in a broader sense. The latest book that I got is about blogging. SEO elements are included in the book, which is not surprising,

What good is a site if no one can find it? That's one of the basic premises behind search engine optimization, or as it is commonly called, SEO. Websites that rank higher in search engine results pages get far more hits than those sites buried several pages back. So ever since the dawn of search engines, clever webmasters have been tinkering away at finding the best ways to get their sites ranked higher, and in turn increase its traffic and visibility.

Today I was surprised to check my email and actually find something interesting )I get spammed a lot( that caught my attention with the subject title, "Questioning the Integrity of Google's Ad Auction Process." It was an email sent to me by Scott Cleland which found me by reading a post I wrote in SEJ titled, " Google Adwords Quality Score: Affiliates Worst Nightmare?

Today I'll be reviewing paid tools for a change )just because they have no free alternatives(, so before I start let me give a short disclaimer: I am not affiliated with either of them and encourage you to honestly share your experience and thoughts. 1. Spying on your competitors' AdSense tactics : AdsSpy - a tool that has no alternatives so far: it will show you more sites under same Google AdSense account.