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April 2008 PageRank Update and VisualRank
Google datacenters have been busy the past couple of days as they were updating toolbar PageRanks (TBPR) across the board. The last complete PageRank update was in late February. SearchEnginePanel.com maintained its PR2 since getting ranked, and is now up to PR3 from this latest update. I’m attributing the small step to writing fresh unique content coupled with promotion through social media, and some of you may have noticed our posts in StumbleUpon or Digg.
More Google News
Coming soon (or perhaps not so soon) to a Google near you - VisualRank. As the name implies, VisualRank will be the image-equivalent of PageRank for web pages. Images will begin to be weighed and ranked just as pages have, but I doubt it will have much of an effect on image search traffic. After all, PageRank is only a mediocre measurement of a page’s link building initiatives, and is far from being a strong indicator of SERP ranking.
More SEP News
During the announcement of our latest theme in late March, we hinted that we had a little project underway. Well, here it is. We’ve recently added a lexicon to our blog to help decipher some of the more cryptic search marketing acronyms and some general search marketing terms. The list will never be exhaustive, but it will be kept updated to contain the more relevant terms in the industry. So for you loyal SEP subscribers that get our feed through email or a feed reader, stop on by to our Lexicon page and brush up on your vocabulary! 
And Speaking of Subscribers…
Some of you may have noticed that our subscriber count dropped from the 60-70 range to the low 40s a couple of weeks ago. I was curious as to how many actual subscribed readers there are of SEP, and decided to purge the email list of non-readers. Basically, I emailed everyone and told them to reply if they wanted to keep their subscription. So even though the subscriber count is hovering around 40 right now (with only 20-30% being from email), it’s a much more accurate depiction of true human readership.
Tags: Google, link building, PageRank, search traffic, SEP, social media marketingUser-Generated Content and the Power of Blogs
User-Generated Content
Whether it be the decreasing cost of the Internet, its ease of use, an affinity for expression, sheer vanity, or a combination of them all, the amount of user-generated content (UGC) is rising exponentially. Everyone from your best friend’s mother to your neighbour’s kitten has a MySpace/Facebook/Orkut/Bebo account or user profile somewhere with very vital information like their favourite music and colour.
But beyond the social networking profiles exists one particular flavour of user generated content - blogs. This special category of user generated content has been gaining a lot of momentum and popularity over the web, and search marketers need to pay close attention to its impact over search engines.
Tags: link building, SEM, SEO, social media marketing, web developmentMicrohoo Takeover Battle Rages On
Today, the press and blogosphere learned that Microsoft’s CEO had sent a public letter to Yahoo’s Board of Directors last Friday, with a three week time-frame for them to come to a buyout agreement. The letter essentially attempts to justify the initial offer of $44.6 billion , and threatens to take the offer directly to shareholders and potentially eliminate Yahoo’s current board. Below is just an excerpt, but you can read the entire letter here .
Tags: AOL, Google, Microsoft, social media marketing, YahooIt has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.
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If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.
AOL Acquires Bebo for $850 Million
AOL’s $850 million (cash) acquisition of the Bebo social networking site comes to surprise for many, despite rumours that Bebo was looking for a buyer. After all, rumours of mergers and acquisitions fly around the Internet everyday. Bebo had however already partnered with AOL in integrating the AIM messenger client with its service.
Although Bebo doesn’t have that much brand recognition in North America (at least compared to MySpace and Facebook), it boasts over 40 million members worldwide. Bebo is particularly well-known around the United Kingdom. According to Alexa, 39.1% of its visitors are from the U.K., with 11.4% and 8.3% of its traffic coming from the U.S. and Ireland, respectively.
Tags: AOL, social media marketing, YahooPacing Quality Link Building Strategies
When it comes to link building initiatives, it is important to look beyond the sheer volume of inbound links to your website. Getting hundreds of incoming links from low quality sites is decidedly not as beneficial as a handful of links from high authority sites.
As would be expected, most of these “high authority” websites are inherently more difficult to get linked from because of their stricter requirements, and affinity to only associate with other “high authority” sites. There might also be unforeseen bureaucracy issues with getting in touch with the link building decision-maker, which may bring your link building initiatives to a standstill.
Tags: link building, SEO, social media marketing