1. Submit content often because Bing ranks current results higher. Freshen up old content by changing it around and spinning the content to make it more up to date and more likely to place higher in the Bing search ranks.

2. Keywords that appear right in the domain name of the site respond favorably in Bing. Bing will also respond to keywords in your sitemap. Your sitemap can be submitted to Bing through a tool called webmaster.

3. Bing seems to rank links to pages inside older domain names with strong backlinks higher. If your site is relatively new then don’t worry about this. Instead focus on your content to make your keyword link rank higher. You might consider buying a domain name that has been around for awhile instead of one that has been newly created. That would make your new content rank higher automatically instead of waiting on your domain name to mature.

4. Bing also seems to weight search results higher that have been through the SEO process. What I mean by that is that your content has been optimized by title, keyword, and description. Don’t focus on this or make it your top priority, though, because if you overdo it you might trigger the search engine filters and achieve the opposite of your goal by not showing up in the search results at all. This method is actually less of a ranking factor in Bing than it is in Google, but it is still an effective strategy for all search engines.

5. Do not bother using meta keywords because these are ignored by both Bing and Google. However, neither search engine penalizes you for the use of meta keywords, so if it works better in other search engines feel free to leave them in when creating search engine optimized content.

6. It appears that Bing gives more importance to theme oriented links than Google does, so if your pages pertain to a specific theme, such as Halloween, make sure to include keywords in your content that pertain to your intended theme.

7. Bing takes longer to crawl a new website than Google does so your link rankings may increase on Bing over time without any effort being put forth by you.

8. Include keywords in the title tags of every page. Bing responds favorably to links in the page titles.

9. Try to make sure that your pages have at least 300 words on them because Bing ranks established pages that contain a larger amount of content higher than smaller pages.

10. Outbound links currently don’t seem to hurt page rankings so enjoy it while it lasts. Bing also responds very favorably to backlinks.

Real time search and social search are two different things. The main things that make them different are the timeliness of the information they provide and the sources from which they are obtained.  Twitter, Google, and Bing respectively have their own ways of providing the ability to run either one or both of these types of searches.

One example of a social search engine is Google’s Social Search. It doesn’t include results from Twitter and was actually developed before Google’s new deal with Twitter was even conceived. The way it works is that Google looks at contacts and services that are defined in Gmail, Google Reader, Google Chat, and the user’s Google Profile to find out about their social network. For example, If you list social networking sites such as Twitter, Flickr, and Digg in your Google Profile then Google will be able to pole those sites to find out who you are connected to in order to build your social circle.

Google mines the links of your social circle members in order to figure out what information is relevant to your search by using their normal link ranking algorithm. For example, if you have a friend on Twitter and they link to their blog and the blog links to their Flickr account, then Google can analyze those links and return links to the content that is relevant to your search.

Real time search means looking through material that literally is published in real time. In other words, material where there’s practically no delay between composition and publishing. For example, a person uses Twitter to “tweet” about an event that they are currently experiencing or they take a picture and publish it immediately for the world to see.

Publishing in real time involves a process called “micro blogging”, which is where an event is experienced and the person experiencing the event quickly types a description or observation into a box and submits it immediately. Some micro blogging examples are tweeting on Twitter, issuing status updates on Facebook, or submitting posts to FriendFeed.

Twitter is the real time publishing leader and is considered to be the micro blogging service. So much material is published by so many people so quickly through Twitter that real time search is largely synonymous with searching tweets. In order for a search engine to successfully index all of the real time data that streams through Twitter they need access to the actual “fire hose” data stream. Google and Bing have struck deals with Twitter to receive this fire hose data so that they can integrate it and index it as part of their normal search results.

Since Google and Bing have both struck deals with Twitter for real time search and have already either constructed their own social search algorithms or in Bing’s case struck a deal with Facebook, we should see the two search engines become much more powerful. Internet search will become a method of obtaining information that is more relevant since information can be obtained in real time and will mostly come from people that we already know and trust. It will be very interesting to see how powerful and influential Internet search might one day become. It might even gain enough strength and exposure to effectively phase out some of the news, entertainment, advertising, and information sources that most of us current use on a daily basis.

The new alliance should increase competition in the SEO market. At present, Google maintains an eighty to ninety percent market share. With the number two and three search engines combining forces, they hope to be able to erode Google’s market dominance. Developing a link building strategy for the Bing search engine will become increasingly more important over the next 2 years when the two search engines are targeting the completion of the technology integration.

One new idea being put forth for the combined search is that it will likely not focus on the old search box in the browser method, although it will be included. The focus will instead be more of an advertising approach where a user can utilize a search box that is part of an advertising ad, an image, a map, or even a video. This will give the new search engine more visibility than if it were just sitting in a list of available search providers in a browser. It could also provide a more targeted in-line search with the media being viewed. Users will have the ability to fire a search from almost anywhere while they are browsing.

What most consider a benefit is that the new sales and advertising model will not include paid inclusion for links. This is the process by which advertisers pay to have their links displayed higher in search rankings. Instead, the pattern will more closely resemble that of Google and rely mainly on web crawler technology for link rankings instead of the economic standing of the companies submitting links.

At first glance the alliance between Yahoo! and Microsoft seems like a favorable change of events that could provide several new attractive features for the SEO market. Search technology should be more accessible, powerful, innovative, and competitive as a result of the technology merger of two of the biggest and oldest players in the search engine arena.

It’s been a little while since the announcement, feel free to share your thoughts on what the Yahoo! and BING agreement means to SEO & PPC going forward.

I regularly visit several black hat sites, here are a few of the more notable ones:

• http://syndk8.net/ – Author of AutoPligg (http://toolshed.syndk8.net/).  Here is a recent Sphinn article on it. http://sphinn.com/story/61851
• http://seoblackhat.com/ Quadzilla charges $100 / month.  I have subscribed a few times for short periods of time, usually 1 month.
• http://www.bluehatseo.com/ – 2nd post is about a new Wordpress tool that will generate trackbacks from simliar blog posts.

When reviewing these sites, there were several interesting discussions and pieces of software being discussed like:

• http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/index.php/link-spamming-101-the-new-xrumer-update/ Xrumer is a forum spamer tool that has been around for a while.  Lots of reviews on Google.
• http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=1053013 A  bid request for the automation of social profiles, I am surprised it is hard to find software or scripts that do this.

It is important to know that Search Engines, Webmasters, Business Owners, and SEO’s are in a constant battle for attention and traffic to their website.  Staying abreast of all developments is important and monitoring black hat seo sites is one that I do this.

For the record, my SEO techniques are primarily white hat and you can read more about this at my White Hat SEO blog.  However, I find that you can gain valuable insight through Black Hat SEO monitoring including:

1. SEO Black Hat is currently focused on link building automation.
2. Black Hat SEO has another distinction when compared to White Hat SEO.  It is often used to promote your own domains, where White Hat SEO tends to focus on working on other people’s domains.
3. Don’t waste time doing SEO link building techniques by hand that are currently being automated by SEO Black Hat.  It is probably a waste of time as Google will eventually solve or devalue this link building tactic.  If not, don’t spend hours of your time in a task that can be done by a script in minutes.
4. Black Hat SEO does work, even if only for a short period of time.  If something appears to be working, is there a way to benefit for White Hat SEO?
5. Black Hat SEO focuses on results, not rankings.   Results might be Adsense, affiliate commissions, or actual sales, but there is little correlation between success and rankings.  Since White Hat SEO tends to be client based, there is a tendency to focus on other variables like inbound link counts, PageRank, traffic growth, top rankings and these items then translate to results.  These additional metrics are required to help explain the process since SEO takes time, at least for White Hat SEO.

I am very interested in Black Hat SEO and I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic and how I work to apply any Black Hat SEO knowledge to my White Hat SEO business.

While this is a popular marketing tactic for insurance, mortgage, real estate and other industries, I think lead generation is an out-dated internet marketing strategy.

When I created a mortgage site at Mortgage101.com in 1998, lead generation quickly became our largest revenue source from mortgage brokers across the country.

Today, while it is still ranked in competitive search results on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, the most valuable marketing activity for advertisers is gained from sending traffic to their site instead of trying to generate on their behalf.

In today’s internet marketing world, you are better off directly marketing with potential customers via your website instead of buying captured information from 3rd parties. When I talk to companies in other industries, this same trend is quickly validated.

NetQuote is based here in Denver, Colorado and I know a few people that have, or currently work there. I am glad to see that NetQuote put in the quality control systems and that they also took action against MostChoice even though it took over 2 years for the judgement to be placed. One last note, NetQuote was only looking for $2.4 million in punitive damages, but the jury ACTUALLY doubled the penalty according to SEOMoz.

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/mostchoice-forks-over-48m-for-stuffing-rival-with-fake-leads-041980/

A check of Dell Inc. and Intel Corp. stock on Google Finance produced real time quote data, whereas the same quotes provided by AOL Money & Finance and MSN Money were delayed by fifteen minutes. On some web browsers (like IE 7.0), the prices will update automatically each minute. With others (such as Opera 9.24), users must click the “Refresh” button for this to occur. When it reloads automatically, the title changes to reflect the current price, which allows prices to be referred to at a glance by looking at the browser tabs.

When real time quote streams were first introduced on Google Finance, only NASDAQ stocks were featured. However, other quotes recently became available in real time as well. For example, Eastman Kodak, General Motors, and Radio Shack stock prices no longer have a twenty minute delay. Google previously lagged behind Yahoo! Finance in this category, but has caught up. An advantage of Google’s stock quote pages in comparison to Yahoo! is that they provide more information about each company and fewer advertisements. Real-time stock quotes are also available on a few other large financial web sites, such as CNBC’s site.

Stock quotes (including the real time data) can also be conveniently retrieved through Google’s search engine, by searching for the company’s symbol or “[name] stock”. For example, a search for “AAPL” or “Apple stock” returns a quote and graph at the top of the results. Users can click on the “Google Finance” link above the graph for additional information about a particular stock. Some of the other major search engines offer this feature as well, including Yahoo! and Ask.com, but have yet to incorporate real time streams into this data.

Overall, Google Finance provides a good way to check current quotes on a wide variety of stocks, and is among a small number of sites offering free real-time quote data without registration. This seems likely to boost the popularity of Google Finance, while siphoning users away from the sites which still provide delayed quotes. However, Google will still have to overcome the fact that it is not very well known as a source of stock market data.

Investor Carl Icahn remains dissatisfied that the company did not merge with Microsoft, according to financial news website bloomberg.com. He has proposed a new board of ten directors to put in place of the current board and facilitate a merger with Microsoft. A separate report on the same site quoted Icahn as saying that it would be “crazy” for Microsoft not to take advantage of the hostile proxy fight to merge with Yahoo. He also claimed that the two companies must combine so that they can “fight” top search engine Google.

A press release issued by Yahoo on May 15th claimed that Carl Icahn’s move to initiate a hostile proxy fight represented a “significant misunderstanding of the facts” regarding the Microsoft acquisition attempt. It stated that the “best interests” of shareholders do not coincide with appointing a new board of directors who will attempt to revive acquisition by Microsoft, pointing out that the Microsoft offer has been withdrawn. It went on to explain why the offer was not favorable, and praised the present board of directors.

If the two search engines were to combine as one as a result of the hostile proxy fight, it would put the vast majority of WWW searches under the control of two companies, especially as they or Google supply results for most of the smaller search engines (Netscape, Hotbot, Altavista). The only other remaining competitor of much significance would be Ask.com. Both Microsoft and Yahoo operate major free email and instant messenger services, but Yahoo.com is also well-known for its popular community-based features like Yahoo Groups, Answers, and Flickr photo sharing.

It remains to be seen whether Yahoo will remain a separate company or be forced to merge with Microsoft through the hostile proxy fight. It is likely that Google will continue efforts aimed at preventing a merger, so as to prevent Microsoft from attaining a more dominant role on the internet. This may include further cooperation with Yahoo and additional statements questioning the excess competitive advantage which might be gained in such a merger.

Of course the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed…when are they ever.

MIVA hopes to earn revenue off of displaying Google Ads on approved web sites and applications, starting out with Miva Direct, which manages tool bar, screen saver, smiley and other applications and websites. So in a nutshell, MIVA has decided it is easier to become a distribution partner for Google, than it is to take it head on.

Shares jumped in early morning trading but perhaps prematurely.   Anything connected to Google seems to jump at first. However, the validity of such jumps does not always pan out.  Think about it.  This is both a positive and negative sign.

It is positive because perhaps MIVA will make some money, which can only help since its current revenue model has been struggling for some time. It is also a sign that MIVA may be showing signs of humility and situational awareness, which it has lacked recently and that perhaps, just perhaps this is the starting point for an eventual acquisition by Google (weirder things have happened).

It is negative because just to make some money and possibly stay in business, MIVA has had to bow to the hand that feeds the market and take a stance that will continue to help its largest adversary Google grow. What does this say about the long term survivability of its pay-per-click program? Which has traditionally been a solid feature filled service for advertisers.

One scenario is that this might be a sign of a forced large scale model change, in that MIVA will move from connecting advertisers and publishers, to exclusively dealing in distribution as time goes on.  By leveraging its deep entrenchment of its Miva Direct products, perhaps it will evolve into nothing more than a distribution partner of those players that outgunned it. If so, it’s a sign that they are loosing advertisers hand-over-fist.

Or perhaps this is simply nothing more than an effort to offset declining revenue and what ever happens from here is a result of corporate management on the fly, as they try to save one of the pay-per-click industry’s founding companies from falling victim to those that MIVA itself helped give birth to.

What ever the case is, the more revenue right now the better so good luck MIVA.