Yahoo Answers has been a very powerful marketing tool. What one needs to do to establish his expertise in a particular field is to simply find related questions and answer the questions while linking them to valuable areas of your website or blog. With this, one can expect that the person clicking through the link has an interest on the topic. He will not have asked the question or searched for it if he does not have an interest in it in the first place. This makes Yahoo answers not only effective but targeted as well.

Also, Yahoo Answers posts have a high tendency of showing up in the Google rankings. If one types a question in Google search, the results are almost always from Yahoo Answers. With Google, your link is not only getting a visit from the one who asked the question. You are also getting visits from dozens of people searching the same question in Google.

However, as one uses Yahoo Answers, he will find out that one of the hardest things to do is to find the questions to answer. You may have a lot of expertise in a particular field but you always have to sift through the results to find open questions which you can benefit from.

There are some old ways of getting some questions. One can browse through the categories in Yahoo Answers to find some related questions. Another way is to set up an RSS feed and sift the results. However, both can be a but painstaking. It also takes time which takes the fun away from using Yahoo Answers for easy marketing.

This is the reason why Yahoo Answers now implements the Suggested Questions feature. This means one does not need to go through the painstaking way of searching for related questions. He can now see related questions as they are suggested for him.

However, Yahoo noted that these questions will only pop up for people who have a decent amount of activity around a particular topic. It takes some time for the system to understand your interest so one has to tell it that “Hey! I’m an expert on this field so please give me some suggested questions.”

The key to using this feature is targeted answering. So Yahoo Answers services need to at least set up different accounts for different niches or only answer on a particular topic.

For those who don’t like the feature. Yahoo Answers allow you to turn it off. But what for when it helps you find the questions you need to establish your expertise?

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When I have been surfing the internet for the latest SEO news, I came across this unique list on how to rank in Twitter for a keyword entitled “5 Steps to Ranking #1 on Twitter“. But I’m wondering what does the author mean for ranking #1. Rank where? The Twitter directory? The search engine? or the top Twitter user list?

The author of the said article indicated five ways on how to ‘increase the ranking’ of a person. He cited the name, username, bio, account activity and number of followers. I agree with him that to be able to achieve maximum potential in Twitter, one must optimize a keyword in all these areas. But what he failed to point out is the different forms of search on Twitter.

Search on Twitter is not one-dimensional. It is not as direct as search engines. Twitter can be searched in various areas such as trends, hash tags, and directories. I think the author failed to point out in the area on which his tips will be more useful.

I also tried the effectiveness of Twitter in ranking in search engines. I have found out how personalities such as Britney Spears, TechCrunch and Kevin Rose have their Twitter profiles in the top 10 rankings when their name is searched.

I have also tried it on myself and yielded the same rankings.

With this, we can say that Twitter can contribute to ranking for certain brands. But how about keywords? I think this can be effective if you put keywords in your username or bio. With hashtag search, you will be associated with a particular term and you may build your credibility on a certain topic based on Twitter conversations. However, I have only tested the search engines on brand search and not on direct keyword search. As for directories, people can control the niche they are associated with because they can freely choose which categories should they belong to.

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Kevin Rose is at it again. Some people have claimed that Twitter have beaten Digg to the ground. It was just this January when Matt Churchill said in his post “Twitter vs. Digg: Measuring Success” that Twitter has equaled Digg in popularity because of a whopping 974% surge in its users thiss year. This was further exemplified with Joe Wallace’s post “Twitter vs. Digg: Social Media Wars” that indicated Twitter had really topped Digg. But what did Kevin Rose do? Whine? Complain? Create another website that will beat Twitter? Hell no. But he did create a website that will help Twitter.

A common error among internet marketers is the search to break new grounds. If you are as lucky as the founder of Twitter or Google, then you may find yourself successful. But then, helping or contributing to what is already out there is a rather wise option to make. That is why we have to commend Kevin Rose for his efforts on this new targeted Twitter directory called WeFollow.

Unlike other directories, WeFollow has this unique feature of getting updated easily. Each entry along with categories are ranked based on the number of followers. All one needs to do is reply to WeFollow on Twitter with the following format:

@wefollow #category1 #category2 #category3

WeFollow have also limited the number of categories you can sign yourself into. I think this is to make sure that the people in each category are somehow targeted. Because anyone can sign themselves to a particular category, there is the danger of irrelevant sign-ups that only solicits followers. If you want to try signing to more than three categories like what @mattcutts did, you will find that only the last three categories were credited.

I think WeFollow is a nice directory especially for those who are starting out on Twitter. Let us face it. All of us want to follow people who are relevant in our field. For example, if you are a designer, wouldn’t you find it more interesting to carry a conversation with a fellow designer than a programmer? Of course, there will still be a connection but not as intense as that of the same niche. Also, this will also be useful for customer targetting. If people are sorted into categories of interests, then targeting them for marketing would be more worthwhile because of better conversions.

In the end, we have to thank Kevin Rose for WeFollow. As Danny Sullivan said in his discussion of WeFollow,

It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start and well worth visiting.

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We have been continuously tackling branding here at SEO tops. And we did for good reason. Even if we tried to deny it, branding is now evolving and may become the next ‘big thing’ in the upcoming years. We have seen Twitter expand and how brands have utilized social media for marketing. We have seen Google update its algorithm with the new focus on branding. We have also heard news from major networks that online television and radio advertising will take its toll in the next months. But what is branding anyway?

Branding is not the name nor is it the logo. It is the very essence of the company’s products and services. It stirs emotions, perceptions and impressions. It creates a perspective and triggers the imagination of its target audience. It is way more than having the right domain name or the right image. It is the shared meanings and associations people create with the brand.

As Martin Lindstrom, the author of “Buyology:The Truth and Lies about Why We Buy” said.

Effective branding leverages emotion, interaction, experience, desire, ritual, faith, and our senses (the more the better). The brain scan results from study after study showed that subjects’ brains reacted to strong brands the same way they react to emotional or even spiritual experiences.

So branding is so much more. It is not enough that you get your name out there. You must tell the people what your company stands for and how your products and services will affect their lives. Of course, since you are not perfect, you will not be able to please all. But if you instilled in their minds that you can please them, they will be convinced by that and believe it.

But what does branding have to do with search? As Lance Loveday said in his post in Search Engine Land entitled “Search:Too Boring for Branding“, search is just way too different from branding. He illustrated this through a commercial of Starburst which he saw on television.

It was easy to imagine being the funny-looking guy, chewing the candy yourself (touch), savoring the flavor (taste) and inhaling the aroma (smell) with your llama-esque nose.

But on search, everything is different. All one gets is this advertisement written in plain text. No emotions, no images. Although search have been proven by some people to contribute to the power of branding, it merely strengthens and does not establish the brand. The brand is only established after the click. As Lance Loveday puts it,

It’s what you do “after the click” that really counts

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With the use of social bookmarking sites as a means of promotion, Delicious have been facing a lot of spam problem lately. Their goal of a community sharing the best websites on the internet turned to spamville overnight. People have been submitting links expecting the popular link juice.

With this, Joshua Schachter, the founder of Delicious, announced last 2007 in the SMX Conference that they are going to implement in the nofollow tag. This is to prevent people from submitting irrelevant links just for link juice. This may have stopped some from submitting spam links but it did not stopped all.

So now Delicious have resorted to another way of solving the problem and that is through silent bans. For those people who do not know what ’silent bans’ mean, it is a way of banning by not notifying the person and rendering that person’s activity irrelevant to the system. This is what Brent Csutoras experienced which he shared on his blog on a post entitled “When Did Delicious Starts Silent Bans?“. According to his post, he saw his past bookmarks disappearing from the system as his new bookmarks are rejected. Here is how he relays his story.

Last week while I was attempting to bookmark a page, I noticed that my saved page did not show up in Delicious, outside of my personal bookmarks page. So if you were to look at the bookmark through Delicious, you would not see that I had saved it at all.

I have no idea how long this has been going on, as it appears that once you’re ’silent banned’ it removes all your previous activities from the system.

Brent Csutoras claimed that this is a rather familiar situation. It was not so long ago when Reddit did the same thing. A person who is silent banned submit a particular story to the websites but then the website does not react. It will not submit the story rendering the account of the person useless.

But one question comes to mind with all these things happening. Why do social bookmarking websites such as Reddit and Delicious have to resort to these informal ways of banning? Why do they keep the account but leave the user useless to the community?

Also, as Brent Csutoras wondered, what triggers the penalty? How can he, who rarely use his Delicious account get banned by Delicious?

I guess these are some questions that Delicious must answer in the next conference they are going to attend.

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Through the years, we have seen different kinds of advertisements. There’s contextual advertising that exists in Adsense and Kontera. There’s also other forms such as video as well as social media advertising. With all these, it is obvious that advertisers are now valuing their market. They want to make sure that the ads reach the right audience to maximize conversion.

Now here is where interest-based advertising comes in. We have received announcement from the Inside Adsense blog that they are implementing this new kind of advertising.

Over the next few months we’ll start offering interest-based advertising to a limited number of advertisers as part of a beta, and expand the offering later in 2009. Whether the advertiser’s goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to their ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of their campaigns and should increase your earnings as advertiser participation increases.

Remember those times when Google have been trying to guess what’s on your mind? Now they seemed to have found one of the solutions. Now as you surf websites and click on certain ads, Google will now record your interest with a cookie. With this, you will see ads based on your interest on other websites.

I think this is good news for both parties. The owner of the website will have higher conversions because he is serving the interest of his surfer while the surfer gets the ads that feeds his interest. You get the idea. It’s not about contextual advertising anymore. It’s about serving the interest of the user.

Of course, it may seem all positive at first. But the problem I see here is that people have varied, changing interests. Some people may be interested on one thing at a certain time then become uninterested in it the next. I wonder how Google is going to address this problem.

But publishers do not need to worry. They have the choice to implement interest based advertising or not. It is entirely up to their discretion. Also, like adsense, they can filter out certain websites with a competitive filter. Just some features Google added that should ease the publishers’ minds.

But still, interest-based advertising is an interesting change. Some may be afraid of it while others may try it. Since it’s new, we still don’t know its conversion possibilities. I guess we should stand by those publishers who will try this new kind of advertising.

But before you jump and start implementing these ads, be sure to change some parts of your Privacy Policy. Google have added some stuff that they would like you to include. Just go here.

For questions and concerns about this topic, you may visit Google Adsense Help.

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Directory submission may have been one of the oldest link building methods out there. However, it is still as effective. With the way the economy is taking the spiral downturn, a resort to free ways of link building is becoming more common. And why should they not be? Directories offer one-way quality link juice. That is, if you post in the right directory.

As Debra Mastaler puts it in her post in Search Engine Land entitled “A Link Building Stimulus“, people are “willing to cut back on the number of link building techniques they contract for, but not the quality of the links secured.” With this, she came up with some of the most popular directories.

Some of the directories she mentioned are DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, Best of the Web, Ezilon, Joe Ant, Massive Links, GoGuides, Rubberstamped, Greenstalk, Business and Aviva. Of course some are more popular than other but submitting to each of them will still contribute to the link juice one is after.

Also, Debra noted the power of specialized directories. There are niche-specific directories such as dog directories and cat directories while there are format-specific ones like RSS directories and podcast directories. The key is to find some niche-specific directories to ensure the quality of links as well as reformat the site in different ways so it can make use of format-specific directories.

Okay, so we have established that directories bring link juice. But what about traffic? Directories may bring traffic only if the website is submitted in a relevant directory. That is the reason why finding a niche-specific directory is very important. Just think of it this way. When a person is looking for information on dogs, will he visit the cat directory? Definitely not. But if he visits the dog directory and found your website there, then he will have a higher likelihood of visiting it. That’s the simple concept.

But upon knowing the power of directories, one does not need to rush. There have been a lot of stories on the internet which have seen their sites get deindexed because they got too excited and submitted to multiple directories at once. Manual submission is still best for it can be regulated to a specific amount per day. Of course, this may take some time that is why it will be wise if you hire a manual directory submission service.

With all the things said in this article, we can expect directory submission to stay despite all the global ups and downs.

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You may have been seeing a lot of Google vs. Twitter articles on the internet. There are these predictions that Twitter may overpower Google in the near future. And what better way for Twitter to up the game than by incorporating trends and search.

However, this seems to be just on testing stage. It was just recently when the Twitter Blog has announced that they will be incorporating search and trends. Twitter search is not really integrated in the website before. I guess they will be transferring the search feature from the subdomain search.twitter.com to the main website. But users have been seeing this trends tab appearing on the top bar. It seems that they are going to implement it.

But what does this have to say in the SEO world? Well, Twitter have always been associated with search. There is always the Google vs. Twitter wars. Some have been claiming that Twitter is slowly overpowering Google.

One instance is when Dave Winer did an experiment in his post entitled “Twitter *kills* Google in Real Time Search“. He tracks the news and he found out how quick Twitter updates compared to Twitter. The upper hand of Twitter, according to him, is the power of real time conversations. For example, in news, it will reach the Twitter community as soon as people talk about it. With Google, on the other hand, they need to wait for someone to write about it. Of course talking about a particular issue with your followers come first before crafting an article. And with the huge brands now having Twitter accounts, one can now count on the tweets for the latest news. As Patricia Skinner said in her article “The Changing Face of Search: Is Google Losing It’s Grip?”, Google may not be the best on the internet anymore. People do not need to depend on it anymore to get updates. They can go to social media websites and follow the experts and get the right information directly.

I think that this evolution comes from the increase use of the internet. People search but they also like to hang out at particular websites like forums. With the emergence of social media, people now have a place to talk about the things that are happening to them. They can also connect with brands and get the news directly. They get the links to the stories that matter most.

However, the only downside I find in this theory is the failure of consideration of countries who do not have constant internet access. Social media only work if you’re always online. This is the problem of Twitter. Here is how Dave Winer described it:

the Twitter result is scattered and disorganized. If you weren’t watching the event unfold in realtime you would not be able to piece together the story

With this, it is hard for non-constant internet users to use social media to track stories. They are not even as knowledgeable to use it because they hardly use the internet. And with that they can only depend on good old Google search.

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A recent announcement in Adweek indicates a launch of a new Twitter directory with a twist – Tracking Twitter. It is a directory specializing on tracking different brands on the internet. Some brands such as Starbucks, Zappos and Jetblue sprung up their page. With the algorithm shift of Google from keywords to branding, I believed this directory will help people in more ways than one not only for the established brands but also for those planning to build one.

Electric Artist is a digital brand management firm and they created this website with the goal of providing a list of brand that people (especially their clients) can keep track of. The problem they have faced in the past is that their clients looking to build brand on Twitter does not know who to follow or who Twitter the most. This tool will help them there.

As Marc Shiller, the CEO, said,

“In doing that, we’re always asking the questions ‘Who has been using Twitter most effectively?’ and ‘Who’s feeds should I follow?’ and so we built a tool for our staff to follow Twitter feeds in different categories. So what we decided to do is just make it public because Twitter doesn’t really have a good directory.”

With Tracking Twitter now open to the public, related brand will not have to look far if they are looking for people to follow. The site contains all the names and stats they will need. However, the problem here is that the website is little in scope. It only covers particular brands in the media industry and not in others. I think this is needed if they’re looking to function as a full directory.

Also, it’s a bit self-indulgent. It’s all about what the Electric Artists know. It’s about the brands they are familiar with and they rank it according to what they think is best. It is not ranked based on what other people are thinking. It is ranked based on their own opinion. There are even some recommendations at the bottom of the page saying “Electric Artists Recommends”. Thing is, people in Twitter comes from all over the world. They are not focused only on a particular geographic location. Some brands may be familiar to some people while unknown to some.

But Electric Artists does have the authority in doing this so we cannot complain. But a diversification in its list will make this website better.

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A post on Archer SEM SEO Blog entitled “New Google Algorithm Change – Commie Update?” have made a claim that Google have changed its search algorithm. This is in accordance with the change in rankings on longtail terms that some people have observed. Although we have not witnessed this ourselves, it is important news to us SEOs to hear that Google is now changing its ranking rules.

Perhaps the most important debate that have emerged here is the ranking of big companies. A lot of websites have found themselves sliding down the rankings as the large companies emerge at the top. This is an ethical issue because having the search results controlled by the “authoritative” sources will only result into less variety and unfair competition.

Google may have a reason for doing this. A lot of of the big guys lack the ability for proper SEO that’s why they are giving them this little boost. However, this may be bad news for the little guys. This only means they have to work double if they want to occupy the rank that is now given by Google to the big guys.

Although this may create a lot of noise in the search engine world, it is still not yet confirmed. It is just a theory made by some people who have observed the lowering of their rankings overnight. Here are some images from the ArcherSEM.com

But should we all worry because of this?

Of course not! What we must remember is that we should change our approach to branding. So long as you create your brand and establish your authority in a certain niche, then you can expect yourself to soar in the rankings.Branding has always been used in social media but today, it is also valuable for search engines. Even more valuable than little keyword alterations.

Google may have a reason for doing this. According to SnoopBloggyBlog, Google may be doing this in connection with their new service – TV and Online Radio Ad Platform. This can only be utilized by people hoping to establish their brands online. So I guess it goes without saying that what Google want is for us to use this advertising platform if we want to ace their ranking algorthms.

So what can you say about this recent shift? It will provide a whole new background on how people do SEO. It may even threaten some methods that are not compatible with it. My only concern here isthe difficulty of building a name for a particular brand. If you’re a nobody then don’t expect to see yourself on Google. With their new algorithms, they will simply ignore you.

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