Search Ads on Google Mobile Search

September 11th, 2007

Just received this email from google. Looks like a new feature for adwords advertisers. I’m not sure how well this is going to work for most verticals, but for local searches, this could be very effective.

Hello **************,

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching Google from their mobile phones.

In the next few days, your search ads will be eligible to run on Google Mobile Search pages (like they currently do on Google.com).
We are offering this feature – and any resulting clicks – for free through November 18, so you can experiment with the rapidly growing mobile platform while still reaching qualified customers.

Each ad’s eligibility will be determined by its landing page and only ads with landing pages that can be adapted for viewing on mobile browsers will be shown.  You can monitor each ad’s performance via a special performance tracking page within your account called “Performance Data: Search Ads on Google Mobile Search.”

Again, you will not be charged for clicks on these ads until November 19, at which time we will begin charging the usual CPC prices.  And as always, you may opt-out of this feature at any time.

We hope you find this new feature helpful and profitable, and we urge you to learn more about it at our AdWords Help Center:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=72226

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

NoDoFollow – A Firefox Extension

September 10th, 2007

Updated, should install and work on Firefox up to 3.5.x Download HERE

Well, I’m not going to get too heavily into the debate over whether or not to nofollow your internal links, but thinking about how I would go about doing it, I decided that it would be helpful to see all the links on the page, and if they were dofollow or nofollow links. So I present NoDoFollow, a simple firefox extension that highlights the links on the page, color coded according to their follow status.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like when activated (Thanks, Matt Cutts. I knew I would find some nofollow links on your blog):

Screenshot of NoDoFollow Firefox Extension

The extension installs into your tools and right click menu and highlights the links pinkish red for nofollow, and light blue for dofollow.

I hope that someone finds this useful. I have at least one friend who was asking for this since he wants to try and test  using nofollow on internal links.

Download NoDoFollow Here

If you find NoDoFollow useful, or have comments, bug reports, or other requests, please comment here, and I’ll see what I can do to help you out!

Google Bowling (Again)

September 9th, 2007

Want to rank number one, but just the thought of doing any work makes you tired? How about you simply eliminate the competition from the SERP? Thanks to A-List SEO.

Have fun with this endeavor as it will surely bring you success for a few days. That is till someone reports you for doing the same thing once you are now in the #1 chair. Because once you are in the Hot Seat everyone is now making you the next target.

Google Bowling 2.0

Bryan Eisenberg Interview

September 7th, 2007

Bryan Eisenberg gave the best presentation I saw at SES San Jose this year (I missed are paid links evil, my partner in crime got to attend that gem of a session), so I’ve been looking at some of his work more closely. I’m very intrigued by the Persuasion Architechture, and the idea of creating visitor profiles and role playing through them as you design and optimize your site.

Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts’ founder and president, interviewed Bryan about personas and Persuasion Architecture. Read more about how this unique insight into designing customer-specific content will help you understand how to convert views into sales.

read the interview with Bryan Eisnenberg

Free PR4 Links

September 7th, 2007

Thanks Matt Jones! Here’s a little social media technique that will certainly be addressed now that someone has pointed it out. Bummer though, free links are cool. Especially from pages with rank.

Remember yesterday I linked to Dees post about coComment?, which is a service that allows you to track comments you have made on blogs.

read more

Die Meta Keywords, Die!

September 6th, 2007

The meta keywords tag is dead. Done. Over. Useless.

Well, mostly. There are still some small benefits to using the meta keywords tag, but unless you know what they are, you may be using it improperly.

If there’s anything I particularly hate when it comes to SEO, it’s the meta keywords tag. I so wish it had never been invented. It’s practically useless, yet people still obsess over it. In this article, I’ll explain more about why you shouldn’t worry about it except perhaps for misspellings, as well as which search engines support it.

read more

Control Your Page Rank

September 4th, 2007

Last week, Rand Fishkin published an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts. Matt repeated, in plain English, that it’s perfectly safe to use nofollow on your internal links, to control the flow of PageRank within your own site. I thought this would end the controversy, but Rand’s interpretation of Matt’s comments left an opening for the semantic parsers of the world to pick a fight.

So we can’t really control our page rank, but it turns out that we can (and should!) be controlling the flow of internal page rank on our sites. This article describes in simple terms what this means, and gives an easy example of how you can get started controlling your page rank and getting more pages indexed.

read more | sphinn story

Touch-screen iPod to take center stage

September 4th, 2007

Apple will at last unveil a touch-screen iPod with a 3.5-inch display at its media event Wednesday, sources have confirmed, some 20 months after Think Secret first broke word of the device’s development.

I want one. I only wonder if it will remain compatible with the stereos in my cars. I use my iPod exclusively in the car, so that would be a deal breaker for me.

read more | digg story

The Hidden “F” in Your Websites [pics]

September 1st, 2007

“A team of scientists engaged in military research recently came to the conclusion that when it comes to reading web pages,most readers read in “F” shaped pattern taking into consideration the eye movements of 232 readers …”

This isn’t really news, but if you’ve never seen these heat graphs, you should take a look. Now you know why sites place content as they do.

read more | digg story

Social Media Marketing’s Effect on Search Engine Rankings

August 31st, 2007

Social media marketing has a direct effect on search engine rankings and engines are using social voting systems and bookmarking trends to determine quality sites.

This is a good article, with some nice information on how search engines use social media sites to influence SERPs. Especially interesting is the coverage of patents that seem to hint at how this information is used to affect ranking.

read more | digg story