For years we've said "content is king". The promise of the web was that we'd have so much more data that we'd be able to make truly informed decisions. But it appears now that we are generating too much data, and we have no good way to understand or integrate all of the data that we have collected. We are literally drowning in data, as individuals, as businesses, as a culture. The amount of media that is available to the average citizen is vastly greater than at any time in history. With Google now indexing 'Tweets' we are on the verge of an internet with trillions of pages of information that are all indexed and available... but only useful if we can figure out the right search query. We desperately need to structure all this data; we need to find the relationships. The Semantic Web promises to automatically discover the relationships for us. On the Semantic Web content may not be all there is, rather, CONTEXT may be "king".

Web 3.0 by Kate Ray - This 15-minute film is a pretty good general overview of the semantic web. That is, turning all of the data on the web into structured data so as to define relationships between it and derive meaning... The video includes interviews with Dixon, Tim Berners-Lee, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Nova Spivack, Jason Shellen, Lee Feigenbaum, John Hebeler, Alon Halevy, David Karger, and Abraham Bernstein.

Watch Kate Ray's film - Web 3.0

Lately I've been reading and listening to social media expert Brian Solis, and learning a tremendous amount about how our social media activity can influence search engine ranking. When it comes to Google search results, it comes down to 'inbound links', and the more links to our web content the better. We've known for a long time that Google will rank the importance, or relevance, of our page content much higher if other people think it is important enough to link to it from their web pages. In the last several weeks we have seen Google and the other search engines begin to rate the social media posts in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the others, as searchable content.

It follows that keywords that occur in social media posts with links to web content will now increasingly count as legitimate 'inbound links' to that content, and elevate our search rank. Our SEO work now has to encompass Social Media Optimization (SMO). In my opinion this is a positive thing. It is better that search visibility should relate to authentic conversations that occur in online communities of interest, than that it should depend on some kind of code manipulation arcana, or specious link swapping scams. Social media presence is frankly a very realistic indicator of relevance and as ethical marketers we should celebrate this development.

This may sound a bit familiar to you; after all, this is the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) right? We know that people use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find relevant content and as such, we optimize our work so that it is discovered in search engine result pages (SERPs).

However, the technicalities involved with wiring SEO are not the same processes required to boost visibility in social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. And it's in social networks like these where people are increasingly spending time communicating, finding relevant and interesting content, and sharing it with their connections. So now, in addition to SEO, we have to implement and manage a Social Media Optimization (SMO) program around our content to increase visibility in these new environments.

Read Brian Solis on SMO

Get Brian's book:
Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Lately I've been reading and listening to social media expert Brian Solis, and learning a tremendous amount about how our social media activity can influence search engine ranking. When it comes to Google search results, it comes down to 'inbound links', and the more links to our web content the better. We've known for a long time that Google will rank the importance, or relevance, of our page content much higher if other people think it is important enough to link to it from their web pages. In the last several weeks we have seen Google and the other search engines begin to rate the social media posts in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the others, as searchable content.

It follows that keywords that occur in social media posts with links to web content will now increasingly count as legitimate 'inbound links' to that content, and elevate our search rank. Our SEO work now has to encompass Social Media Optimization (SMO). In my opinion this is a positive thing. It is better that search visibility should relate to authentic conversations that occur in online communities of interest, than that it should depend on some kind of code manipulation arcana, or specious link swapping scams. Social media presence is frankly a very realistic indicator of relevance and as ethical marketers we should celebrate this development.

This may sound a bit familiar to you; after all, this is the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) right? We know that people use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find relevant content and as such, we optimize our work so that it is discovered in search engine result pages (SERPs).

However, the technicalities involved with wiring SEO are not the same processes required to boost visibility in social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. And it's in social networks like these where people are increasingly spending time communicating, finding relevant and interesting content, and sharing it with their connections. So now, in addition to SEO, we have to implement and manage a Social Media Optimization (SMO) program around our content to increase visibility in these new environments.

Read Brian Solis on SMO

Get Brian's book:
Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

While there are an astounding 55 million tweets per day on twitter, there are and even more impressive 600 million Twitter searches per day. Twitter has become THE real time search engine for the internet itself as well as social media. If you want to know what's happening NOW, search Twitter.

Microblogging service Twitter announced that it now boasts close to 106 million registered users--up more than 1,500 percent over a year ago--and continues to add 300,000 new users each day. Speaking at the company's first Chirp developer conference in San Francisco, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone added that Twitter now fields 55 million tweets and 600 million search queries per day. Despite the popularity of the service, Williams said the firm is still seeking ways to make Twitter more mainstream, adding that when consumers begin to type "I don't get..." into Google search, "I don't get Twitter" is the second suggestion, followed only by "I don't get drunk I get awesome."

Read the whole story at FierceMobile

While there are an astounding 55 million tweets per day on twitter, there are and even more impressive 600 million Twitter searches per day. Twitter has become THE real time search engine for the internet itself as well as social media. If you want to know what's happening NOW, search Twitter.

Microblogging service Twitter announced that it now boasts close to 106 million registered users--up more than 1,500 percent over a year ago--and continues to add 300,000 new users each day. Speaking at the company's first Chirp developer conference in San Francisco, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone added that Twitter now fields 55 million tweets and 600 million search queries per day. Despite the popularity of the service, Williams said the firm is still seeking ways to make Twitter more mainstream, adding that when consumers begin to type "I don't get..." into Google search, "I don't get Twitter" is the second suggestion, followed only by "I don't get drunk I get awesome."

Read the whole story at FierceMobile

All of us use Google search, most of us use it multiple times every day. Some of us can't imagine how we got our work done before we had Google search. But how many of us know how use the 'power features' of Google? Google search can actually do far more sophisticated searches than most people ever attempt. By learning a few very simple techniques you can take advantage of the inner workings of the Google search engine and perform all kinds of advanced searches that will return what you are looking for faster and more reliably. For example:

Search exactly as is (+).
Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.

See more Google Search tricks here.

Google is proving to be much more than just a search engine. I think we all have learned to rely on Google for a variety of things that we used to do in much more cumbersome ways, but that we now do effortlessly with this amazing service. Here are some special Google features you may not know about that make things even easier. Trust me, some of these are amazing:

See the whole list of Special Google Features here

Google is proving to be much more than just a search engine. I think we all have learned to rely on Google for a variety of things that we used to do in much more cumbersome ways, but that we now do effortlessly with this amazing service. Here are some special Google features you may not know about that make things even easier. Trust me, some of these are amazing:

See the whole list of Special Google Features here

We're down to just two significant search engines - Google and Bing. This article includes a useful review of the sequence of search engine mergers that we've endured in the last decade.

This week Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission.

This means that Yahoo! will close down its own search engine and start using Bing search results instead, probably as early as next week.

Read the whole story at Pandia.com

Is this the year that Social Marketing will advance from its brilliant "trial stage" to achieve a more mature form, and take its rightful place along side Email Marketing and Search Marketing as one of the "three pillars" that will make up the backbone of online marketing going forward? Brian Solis is one of the most accomplished writers and thinkers on the social media front lines.

In 2010, Social Media will rapidly escalate from novelty or perceived necessity to an integrated and strategic business communications, service, and information community and ecosystem. Our experiences and education will foster growth and propel us through each stage of the Social Media Marketing evolution.

As MarketingSherpa observes, "2010 is the year where social media marketers gain the experience required to advance from novice to competent practitioner capable of achieving social marketing objectives and proving ROI."

Read the whole story at BrianSolis.com

We had a client who ran an AdWords campaign over the holiday shopping season without monitoring his campaign closely. He got a ton of business from the effort, and was thrilled, until he looked at the cost of ALL of the clicks he was paying for, and did the math with the orders he actually got. In the end it turned out he lost money on every sale. He got the traffic, and he got the sales, but the final accounting showed that he had a completely unsustainable method of getting his sales. To use AdWords successfully you have to pay close attention to the ROI. Here's a great article form the NYT that reviews the potential pitfalls of using AdWords:

"Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords"

Does this mean that Google can search phone conversations that we make with their new gMail VOIP functionality?

Pushing ahead in the decades-long effort to get computers to understand human speech, Google researchers have added sophisticated voice recognition technology to the company's search software for the Apple iPhone.

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like "Where's the nearest Starbucks?" or "How tall is Mount Everest?" The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google's servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

Read the whole article

Google Suggest is a feature that analyzes what you're typing into the search box and offers relevant suggested search terms in real time. You can choose one of the suggested queries by moving up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

This is an important consideration for advertisers who thrive on less popular keywords. When Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) first introduced AdWords in the early 2000s, it was very cost effective to secure the most popular keywords and drive quality traffic to your site. As advertisers became more sophisticated, however, competition for those most popular keywords increased dramatically.

Read the whole article

Who are your site visitors likely to be, and what are they likely to be coming to your web site for? They're coming on a 'quest'; what is it? If you can figure this out, and create site content that fulfills your site visitor's quest, you have a chance of keeping them on the site long enough to realize what a great product you have. If you fail to figure this out you are probably wasting your time with your web site. It's all about 'relevance' these days. We're way beyond the idea that people "surf" the web looking for interesting and beautiful web sites. Today we know that most web traffic is mediated by 'search', and most search driven traffic is driven by an information 'quest'. Match the quest with the content of the site they land on after a Google search, and you have relevance... bingo!

As a part of a larger communications plan, an effective site has a specific job. (Notice here that I didn't say simple. Simple and specific are different things. Simple isn't always good for a site -- specific is.) The more specific the job, the more effective the site can be. On top of that, there's a bonus. The more specific the job for the site, the more creative your creatives can get with it. Specificity has always been a critical component of great traditional creative. Not only is that also true on the Web, it's magnified. Specific goals lead to better creative. Better creative leads to deeper engagement, which further boosts effectiveness.

Read more at Adotas.com

If you have Flash on your web site you know how huge this development really is.

In a move that could add substantial volumes of Flash content to Internet search results, Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to provide optimized Flash Player technology to enhance the searching of this content. The project, being announced Tuesday, will enable searches on Flash content to return text and links, which can then be indexed, said Justin Everett-Church, Adobe senior product manager for the Flash Player. Content from a Flash application or even a game or advertisement will be available to search engines. Pages containing a Flash .SWF file will be returned in a search.

Read the whole article in InfoWorld

Accessing the internet from smart phones and mobile devices is changing the game. While we have been watching for this development for some time, it appears that the necessary technical infrastructure is finally matching up with an audience in the marketplace. The mobil web is about to explode; is your web site 'mobile ready'?

The Nielsen Company today reported that mobile Internet extends the audience reach of many leading Internet sites by an average of 13 percent over home PC traffic alone. For some categories, such as weather and entertainment, the extended reach can be even greater. Nielsen's data show that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience.

Read the whole story.

Forgotten Fundamentals of SEO - Would you like to get more traffic from your business website? It's a rhetorical question, of course, because we all want more traffic for our websites. It's the first step to Internet marketing success. In this article, I'll show you an easy way to increase your website's traffic levels (and overall success) through a systematic and proven technique. And you probably already guessed the technique based on the title of this article. Essentially, you are going to write one page of quality web content for each of your key phrases.

Brandon Cornett on Search Optimization