Protect Your Site From Spammers With ReCAPTCHA @ Google Webmaster Central

Reference: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

If you allow users to publish content on your website, from leaving comments to creating user profiles, you’ll likely see spammers attempt to take advantage of these mechanisms to generate traffic to their own sites. Having this spammy content on your site isn't fun for anyone. Users may be subjected to annoying advertisements directing them to low-quality or dangerous sites containing scams or malware. And you as a webmaster may be hosting content that violates a search engine's quality guidelines, which can harm your site's standing in search results.

There are ways to handle this abuse, such as moderating comments and reviewing new user accounts, but there is often so much spam created that it can become impossible to keep up with. Spam can easily get to this unmanageable level because most spam isn’t created manually by a human spammer. Instead, spammers use computer programs called “bots” to automatically fill out web forms to create spam, and these bots can generate spam much faster than a human can review it.

Google Introducing a New Rich Snippets Format: Events

Reference:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Last year we introduced Rich Snippets, a new feature that makes it possible to surface structured data from your pages on Google's search results. So far, user reaction to Rich Snippets has been enthusiastic -- after all, Rich Snippets help people make more informed clicks and find what they need even faster.

We originally introduced Rich Snippets with two formats: reviews and people. Later in the year we added support for marking up video information which is used to improve Video Search. Today, we're excited to kick off the new year by adding support for events.

Content Syndication and RSS 101 By Ron Jones @ Search Engine Watch

Reference:http://searchenginewatch.com/

So you have a Web site or blog and you need to tell the world and invite them to hear what you have to say. Content syndication is a content sharing strategy that you can use to get the word out. Several people asked me to cover this topic in more detail after reading my columns on duplicate content and article marketing.
Basically, content syndication is the process of sharing your site or blog content with other Web sites related to your industry or niche. In addition to helping you promote your site, this great strategy also helps with your SEO efforts.

Benefits to Sharing
Syndicating or "sharing" your content to other sites has benefits. Reaching out to other related Web sites helps you build a community around your content.

Many Web site owners are hungry for good quality content. Sharing with them generates exposure to you and your Web site. This in turn means more traffic and links, which is what we all want.

Having many streams of Web site traffic from other sites in which you've syndicated to will bring visitors who will leave comments, ask questions, share their thoughts, and provide feedback. This creates a community of people around your site who interact with each other and help spread the word.

Link Building for Bing Rankings: Dos and Don'ts By Chris Crum

 Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/

It's easy for businesses to get caught up in Google's expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That's certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too.

I'm obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo's share is declining, while Bing's is gaining. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway.

Do you take Bing into account when optimizing your site? Comment here.

We don't hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don'ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing's policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion.

Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."

Article Marketing 101 By Ron Jones

Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/

Article marketing is a good tool for reaching out to a broader audience and letting them know about your expertise on a given topic. The purpose is to establish credibility and drive traffic back to your Web site. So let's first cover the basics of article marketing and submission, and then touch on potential duplicate content issues.
What is Article Marketing?
Article marketing allows writers to promote themselves and their company by writing articles and making the content freely available for reproduction on other Internet sites. Basically, you're providing something of value for free to those who have similar interests or work in your field.

Link Marketing Challenges & Solutions By Justilien Gaspard

Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/

What are two of the biggest obstacles companies face in link marketing? Developing linkable content and making people aware of it. Here are some insights from my experience that will make it easier to overcome those obstacles.
First let's look at linkable content. Content could be anything from an interactive tool, to videos, to user-generated content. Don't limit yourself to thinking content is just written words by a writer.
Study Related Industries
There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Study what other related industries are doing to attract links. This will give you an edge on your competition. While they're busy investigating each other, study what other competitive industries are doing.

Top International Search Marketing Failures to Avoid in 2010 By Michael Bonfils

Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/

As we begin a new decade, our best chance for success in 2010 is to look back over the failures of our past in order to succeed with our programs in the future. Samuel Smiles once wrote, "We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
Although it's nearly impossible to list all the failures I've seen over the last 15 years since our beloved industry emerged, I've seen five big ones. We'll look at two today, and three more in our next installment.

Failure 1: Misguided Research
I'm almost embarrassed to admit that, like many, I've often dreamed of selling something for a dollar profit to every Chinese and Indian citizen, but I would never base population as a target market strategy. Although it isn't entirely impossible, there are many things to consider when researching your markets.
It all starts with your primary objective. Branding a product, versus selling a product, versus obtaining a lead for your product would almost all have different strategies.

Google Ditches Local Listings for SEOs and Designers - By Chris Crum

Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/

As 2009 came to a close, Google managed to get SEOs riled up for one last controversial topic. For some time, SEOs and web designers have been noticing that Google has not been showing local listings in search results for queries related to their businesses - even location-specific ones.

Should SEOs and designers be worried about local listings?

As Matt McGee mentions in a Search Engine Land piece, even a query like "candy" without any geographical indicator will bring up a seven-pack of local results, but a query for "seo" or "web design" or even something as specific as "web design vancouver" will bring up no local listings whatsoever (although the organic results still heavily favor local businesses in location-specific queries).

 

Needless to say, some SEOs and designers are taking this as something of a slap in the face, justified or not. Search engine optimization and web design are both services after all, and just about every other type of service you can think of will yield local listings in a Google search.

CSS Vs. Tables @ Decloak.com

reference: http://www.decloak.com/

Fully integrated CSS benefits are challenged on their practicality and real-life usefulness
fully integrated means replacing all table tags with div tags
a.k.a. CSS-P or css tables

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
The terms, CSS and CSS-P (or full css) are two (2) very
different things in this article. The term "CSS" is more of the regular CSS used for font styles and the like. The term, "CSS-P", is specifically referring to use of div tags to replace table tags. This article challenges CSS-P, not CSS.


Are they any benefits to using a fully CSS integrated solution (css tables or CSS-P)?
No. There is no "real-life" or practical benefits when you start to replace each-and-every-single table tag with DIV tags and attempt to use full CSS to display your webpages properly across popular browsers.