The search engine wars are heating up. In an effort to loosen Google’s stranglehold on the search engine industry, Microsoft created “Bing,” which Microsoft describes as a “decision engine” and which has a very different look and feel than Google. To add to the onslaught, Microsoft has partnered with Yahoo in an effort to gang up on Google.

Google didn’t get to where they are in the industry by taking things lying down, however, and they are fighting back. Google’s latest weapon in the search engine battles is “Google Caffeine,” a brand new search engine which is currently in the testing phase.

It’s always a good idea to revisit what makes for good copywriting SEO. The better your articles with respect to SEO, the better your website will perform with search engines; or, if you are a freelance SEO copywriter, the more your work will be in demand.

I caught wind of this diagram the other day (originally from FredCavazza.net):

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

The immediate message is pretty clear. Social media is everywhere, and can perform many different functions. I thought it might be fun to take a little closer look at this list and how it’s organized.

A good website can be separated into two main pieces, design and content. Although both elements deserve your attention, in my opinion it is essential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that the overall design is structured around the content.  Following this simple rule will guarantee your site is built on a foundation of simplicity, positive user experience and effective SEO.

I’m sure you’re thinking “if an SEO-friendly design is centered around content, what am I trying to do with the design?”

The answer is fairly simple. The design should enhance the content and display the information in a way that is accessible for both search engines and users. The best way to achieve this is to make sure your design utilizes white space properly. White space is the area between elements (lines, paragraphs, headers, footers, etc.) of your design.  Put simply, white space allows for easy scanning of your content, which is essential. White space helps to reduce the amount of content your users see in one block, preventing them from becoming overwhelmed.

 

The All-Star game has come and gone, and once again, the American League has emerged victorious. The National League hasn’t won since 1996, but you can bet that won’t stop them from coming out swinging next year. The excitement of the All-Star game brings the question to mind: What does it take to be an SEO All-Star? Let’s look at the qualities that good baseball players and good SEO marketers share.

In our SEO-crazed frenzy to optimize our websites, we sometimes neglect a crucial element of a full-service web operation: the blog. What’s so great about blogs? Blogs are the very definition of fresh content. When people hop onto the web, they want to see what’s new. Let’s face it: your website promotes the same things every time someone logs on. It features your brand, it offers your goods or services. Unless you are reinventing yourself on a daily basis, there’s not much new happening day-to-day.

While Google remains the heavyweight champion of search engines, the Internet giant might finally have a legitimate contender in Bing, the Microsoft search engine, evolved from LiveSearch. In addition to a cool look, which involves a fresh, full page, full-color image every day (for something really cool, move your mouse around that image to get questions relevant to the image, which you can then click for the answers), Bing has a bunch of great features, many of which you won’t find on Google.

Curious about just how well your website is doing and how much it is worth? Load up a convenient little site called WebsiteOutlook (websiteoutlook.com). With this site, all you have to do is put in the name of your website, or any website you are curious about, and click calculate. You’ll instantly get some very informative stats regarding just how effective the website in question really is.

Facebook is coming out with a new feature that allows custom URLs for profiles, so that your profile URL, instead of something like http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=pp#/profile.php?id=89X3438, would be something like http://www.facebook.com/JoeInternet. This illustrates an important point about SEO,which is that shorter URLs, especially ones that don’t have a bunch of numbers or random words in the middle, are more clickable.

 

A recent change in the way Google tracks links has affected those involved in the practice of “PageSculpting.” PageSculpting is essentially a way of controlling your link juice so that certain links get more than others. In the past, if you had a certain number of links on your page, each one would get equal authority from your main page. A way to adjust this situation was to “nofollow” some of the links, so that those links would get no link juice and the juice they did get would be redistributed to your other links.