For the past 3 years, Sphinn.com has been a community where internet marketers could submit stories, vote on them, and discuss them. It was basically the “Digg for SEO and internet marketing.” Remember, Digg.com hates SEOs, and any SEO-related stories would always get buried there. So, Sphinn was a nice alternative for our little community.

Earlier this month, Sphinn announced that it would be getting rid of its voting feature. Users can still submit stories to Sphinn, but it’s now up to their team of editors to determine which stories are featured on the front page. Some claim this will help eliminate spam, but many others (myself included) feel this is the death of Sphinn as it’s completely removing the community aspect of the platform. There are also legitimate worries that editors will just promote content from their friends, turning Sphinn into a club that requires you know somebody to “get in.”

With all of these developments, it comes as no surprise that an alternative to Sphinn has cropped up. SERPd.com is the new place SEOs and internet marketers can go to submit and vote on stories. The site was created by Chris Burns from Burn SEO and Gerald Weber from the Houston SEO company SEM Group.

From what I can tell, the site is essentially what Sphinn used to be, making it a cool place to visit if you’re one of the many people unhappy with Sphinn’s decision to say goodbye to voting. As of right now, the website is still in its beta stages, but you can already sign up to start submitting and voting on stories.

Personally, I’m really pleased with what I’m seeing. I think removing the voting feature from Sphinn was a huge mistake, and I haven’t felt the need to use the site since. I’ve spoken a bit with Gerald about the new site, and he assures me that moderators will let the voting community have its say (for right now, 10 votes are needed to get to the front page), but they will stamp out any obvious spam.

So, go ahead and check out SERPd.com. It’s free to signup.

What do you think? Will it replace Sphinn?

Immediately after I caught wind of Google Instant, I started researching and observing the reactions from other people within the SEO community. If you haven’t heard about Google Instant yet, let me brief you quickly:

Direct from Google:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

You can read more about Google Instant here.

Much like any of the past changes that occurs with Google, many people who have a vested or personal interest in SEO tend to get concerned. I honestly feel the pain, especially when there are situations that I feel will have a profound affect on my own SEO business ventures. The key concern is if Google Instant will Kill SEO? To give some remote rest to your mind, I am one who doesn’t think it will. That said, I do, however, think it will create purge effect on how SEO’s approach their goals.

In this post, I’d like to publish my thoughts on how I think Google Instant will change SEO. The points I make both bring opportunities as well as challenges to the table. The newly found opportunities, I feel, are things that were once challenges, and ironically, the things that typically came easy in the past, are actually things that I now believe are going to become challenges. In all honestly, I see it as simple as that. Nothing less, and nothing more.

To begin with, I feel it’s now more important than ever to make sure that your listings ranks above the top fold, and look good. Google Instant is all about helping speed things up for people. In part of this process, Google Instant places a lot of focus on keeping people off the second and third page results. Instead of viewing additional pages, Google is directing people to adjust their query in the search bar. So, when your listing does pull up in a predicted query result, it’s vitally important that it  pulls up above the top fold and looks appealing. Publishers should revisit the first few sentences of their content. Especially, the content directly below header tags. Also, meta descriptions should be looked at as well.

As mentioned above, Google Instant is being advertised as something that will help speed up searches. But, in my opinion, this is also something that Google has developed to help increase AdWords revenue. If part of their goal is to keep people off the second and third page results, then that inadvertently places an increased focus on sponsored listings. So, if you focus on ranking well in organic search, this is going to make your job a little more difficult simply because the sponsored ads are going to look even better than before.

On the contrary, Google Instant may be useful for search engine marketers simply because it reveals the keywords Google is suggesting to users. Basically, this gives marketers a roadmap on precisely which keywords to target. Doing a basic search for single keyword reveal the most popular long-tail keyword phrases suggested. From there, these popular long-tail keyword phrases can be investigated to see if it’s worth the effort to target.

Another reason why Google Instant can offer great opportunities for online publishers who monetize their content is because people who formally have been bidding on long-tail keywords in AdWords may soon conclude that they will need to start bidding on more primary keywords and phrases due to the fact that their existing long-tail targeted ads may take a dip in exposure. In other words, publishers who have the resources and ability to pull organic rankings for keywords higher up the food chain may start to see a higher the payoff than before.

Another benefit to Google Insight is that it’s being marketing as a service that caters to less computer savvy people. Inadvertently, this means that people who choose to use the service are also more likely to be what I call, “Click Happy.” In other words, you may start to discover that the traffic Google Instant sends your way will be more of people who are unaware of what is user generated content and what is contextual ad based content. In other words, the traffic that Google Instant sends your way can very well lead to a higher concentration of “Click Happy” people. This is great for people who monetize their sites with programs such as AdSense.

Ultimately, it’s my opinion that Google has created a system that does allow people to save time performing searches. But I feel that it’s also a system that allows people to think less for themselves. It’s a system that influences people by offering suggestions towards what to search for. Secondly, it’s a system that optimizes sponsored listings and ultimately helps Google continue to increase revenue with AdWords. This again is due to the increased probability that users will click on the  sponsored listings instead of the organic ones.

All that said, I believe that Google Instant will make SEO easier as well as more difficult at the same time. The simple fact that Google reveals the most popular keyword phrases allows SEO’s to know exactly which keywords to chase. Simple research based on these discoveries will allow SEO’s to determine if it’s worth their time to target them.

Another thing to consider is that it is now very important to focus less on targeting broader ranges of keyword terms within your content. This is something that I have already been doing for many years. In other words, in most cases, what you see in my <title></title>, <H1></H1>, and <H2></H2>, are typically the actual keyword phrases I am targeting. On the contrary, many other marketers tend to focus on targeting secondary keywords within their content as well. In the past, this has proven to work quite well. The way I feel about that is basically, content is material, and just like with any job, it’s always best to control the amount of resources consumed to complete a goal or task. Writing content is a controllable business expense. So, in the past, publishers could easily kill two birds with stone, by targeting multiple keywords and phrases in one copy. Again, many years ago, this was a focus of mine as well. But, in recent years I have decided to write content with the sole purpose of ranking for specific keywords I want, and let the chips fall where they may on anything extra.

Prior to Google Instant, I know that my content did attract an undetermined amount of traffic inadvertently through secondary long-tail keyword targeting. However, I feel now it’s more important than before to place more focus on targeting primary keyword phrases per page rather than both. Once again, the reason being is that people are going to be more critical when it comes to clicking on the results shown. People will be more susceptible to click on listings that have an exact title and description match to the keyword phrase being searched. My point is this. I think that Google Instant will cause publishers to write more content in order to continue experiencing success with gaining traffic organically. The issue at hand is not ranking top fold for the keywords, but more so with attempting to control and mold how Google displays the listing organically. In other words, I feel more content will need to be written in order to customize the results in a way that continues to appeal to people.

On the same note of difficulty, I also think Google Instant may actually makes things more challenging for SEO’s simply for the fact that popular keywords are going to have a surge of newly added competition. Because popular phrases and long-tail keywords are now visible to everyone, the job for ranking for these terms may become more difficult as they are no longer a speculation or even mystery. Now that these predicted search queries are visible, there will be an increase in the number of people targeting them.

Overall, it’s easy to see the debate regarding Google Instant. Will it kill SEO? I am one who doesn’t think so. However, I do believe that it will cause people to adjust their approach. I see Google Instant as something that will bring many things forward that were once difficult. And I see it as being something that will push back the things that were once easy. All in all, I don’t think Google Instant is an SEO killer, but more so an SEO purge. Meaning, anyone is the business of SEO needs to recognize that things can and will change. Further more, those who continue or begin to find success are those who accept, adapt, and adjust to change. These same rules apply largely to any form of business, or general life experience. Change is good. And success comes to those who easily adapt and adjust to it.

What are your thoughts? Is Google Instant a Dream Come True or a Nightmare For SEO?

Google launched a new text auto completion tool called, Google Scribe. The tool is very simple to use, and based on the articles I have read, people seem to think it works well. The tool is a text auto completion service. Meaning, as text is being typed, the tool automatically attempts to complete the sentence using related words or phrases. One immediate benefit I see from using the tool is that it can save on keystrokes. This can come in handy for mobile users. Google also suggests that the tool can aid in choosing correct or popular phrases, which to me, may indicate some SEO value.

Apart from using the tool to choose the most popular or correct phrase, I am curious if Google Scribe offers any hidden SEO value such as finding keywords? Andy Beard makes a mention about Google Scribe SEO on his blog. In his observations, he noted that the phrases being suggested appear to be accurate to some degree, but do not add priority in certain situations. He also noted that suggested phrases do not arrive based on your own Google account personalization or search history. That part can come in handy because the phrases being suggested are pure, and lack any influence from your own account.

Aside from attempting to discover if Google Scribe offers any other forms of SEO value, I am having trouble figuring out what the overall purpose the tool could used for. After reading multiple reviews about it on other sites, it seems that many other people are having the same problem as well. For the time being though, Google Scribe is still a fun tool to use and experiment with. However, If you are looking for some free keyword tools offered by Google, I suggest using AdWords Keyword Tool coupled with Wonder Wheel for a visual aid.

It’s hard to find good quality information now a days. And it seems like it’s even harder to find good solid information about SEO. So here’s a SEO Blogs that I think you’ll enjoy reading. It’s a site that I feel does a great job delivering the goods and helping people towards learning more about search engine optimization. I found the site on Sphinn.com, after having a successful front page story submission. And while we’re on the topic of Sphinn, if you haven’t joined the community, I recommend doing so. Once you do, you’ll instantly sync yourself with a lot of experienced people who do nothing but eat, sleep, drink SEO 24/7.

Hobo SEO Company

Hobo SEO is a company based near Glasgow, Scotland. They focus on providing customers with the highest quality SEO services and also help with online branding. They are a content focused SEO company who show their clients firsthand how to do what they even do themselves.

At the time of writing this article, Hobo SEO has over 6700 RSS subscribers, and over 2200 Twitter followers. Those are quite impressive numbers, so they must be doing something right. They claim that their site is viewed by over 50,000 people every month, many of them come direct from Google searching for DIY SEO tips.

Hobo SEO goes the extra mile and even offers people a free SEO eBook titled, “hobo guilde to GOOGLE SEO.” You can get your free copy simply by joining their free newsletter.

Additional freebies include:

1. DIY SEO GUIDE – Where you can get some help understanding why your website is performing poorly in Google.
2. Linkbuilding Guide – They say that the key to high rankings in Google is to have other real websites link to yours. Their linkbuilding course will help you learn more about successful linkbuilding.
3. Beginners Guide to SEO - For beginners, this is an excellent start. Hobo SEO’s Beginners Guide to SEO offers you everything you need to get started with becoming a savvy SEO yourself.
4. SEO Blog – Visit their SEO Blog where tips and ideas about Google and search engine optimization are shared among 50,000 montly visitors.

With all the freebies, the guides, the newsletter, and the blog, Hobo SEO is one of the better SEO blogs I have seen. All in all if you’re looking for high quality SEO information from people who know what they’re talking about, I recommend making HoBo SEO one of your daily reads.

What are some of your favorite SEO sites that you’d like to share with others? Drop a comment and let us know. Also, if you have your own SEO site, you’re welcome to tell everyone about it too.

It was only after I did the research when I realized that a lot of hard work really went into the development of Google Chrome for Mac OS X. In fact, it literally took over one year to release into beta. In September of 2008, software engineer, Mike Pinkerton, was assigned to help with the Chromium Project and Google Chrome.

Prior, he had accepted a position at Google back in September of 2005 to do work for their Firefox team, and four months later moved to Google’s Mac Client Team. Pinkerton has many years of experience in the web browser industry starting in 1997 with Netscape Communications. But interestingly enough, it was during that time when Mike Pinkerton and his partner began working on the Camino web browser.

Camino is a Mozilla based browser developed specifically for Mac computers. Camino is a very fine tuned web browser. In fact, just last month, Camino 2.0 was officially released. Now the ironic part to all this is the fact that while Mike Pinkerton was developing Camino, he also was developing Google Chrome at the same time. Active users have been eagerly waiting over a year for the release of Google Chrome for Mac and the update on Camino, and interestingly enough, both came within a month from each other.

The great news is that Google Chrome is finally here for Mac and also a great alternative to FireFox is available as well. I’ll provide a review on Camino in the near future. In the mean time, I’d like to dig into Chrome for Mac and explain some of the features.

To begin with, Pinkerton explained that it was important to make sure that the Mac version of Chrome was fast, stable, and secure, just like the Windows version. He stated that they completely rebuilt Chrome for Mac from the bottom up and made many fo the useful Mac OS X features apart of the Google Chrome experience.

Some of these native features include integrating the Mac OS Spell Checker. Another is Keychain. They wanted to make it so that passwords created by users could be stored and accessed centrally even when created by other web browsers. Additional features unique to Mac include sandboxing support which helps make Chrome even more secure.

To learn more about the key features of Google Chrome and more details about Google Chrome for Mac, I recommend tuning into Mike Pinkerton’s presentation video below:

One of the key features that I personally enjoy the most is the Omnibox. Becuase of that, I want to also include a second video that explains more about it and how it can benefit you:

All in all, I am very glad to see Google Chrome finally available for Mac. Keep in mind, this is a beta release and there’s going to be a lot more work done before it’s final. Also, beta for Mac is different than beta for PC. For instance, Google Chrome for Mac doesn’t support extensions yet which make it difficult to customize, although as of writing this, TechCrunch has some updates about that. You can check out the post on Google Mac Blog and the post on Google Chrome Blog to learn more. If you want to learn more about Mike Pinkerton, you should check out his blog and follow him on Twitter.  Over the next few weeks I am going to use both Chrome and Camino and write a future article depicting their differences.

Yahoo! announced on their Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog that they are hosting a free one hour webinar that will demonstrate why using adding Yahoo! My Display Ads into your marketing mix can energize your search campaigns. The webinar will be held this coming Thursday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. You can register for the webinar here.

Yahoo! My Display Ads is an innovative display advertising solution that allows you to easily create your own banner ads and run them across the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! claims that their service isn’t just for big companies. Today, they have opened their doors to smaller businesses and individuals. They offer an easy and affordable way for you to create banner ads and run them across their entire Yahoo! network.

Creating ads is simple. Yahoo! insists that designers are not needed and that there are no development costs involved. Yahoo! My Display Ads comes with design tools that will help you create and customize your own banners. The ad system also offers campaign targeting. You can specify the geographic locations, site-content categories, and demographics you want. Additionally, you have the option to set a daily budget, and control the pay per click and cost per impression rates. Lastly, Yahoo! My Display Ads offer performance tracking. You can get daily reports on clicks, impressions, and conversions. There’s also tools that allow you to maximize your ad performance.

By attending this free webinar, you will You will learn: The benefits of combining search and display advertising, more about Yahoo!’s innovative display advertising and targeting solutions, display advertising best practices, and how other business owners are succeeding with display advertising. I recommend tuning in. It’s free and the webinar will begin during the afternoon, so you can kick back and listen in while you have lunch.

When Google Chrome web browser was first introduced, instantly I was hooked. The browser performed beautifully, it was super fast, and amazingly stable. Seriously, it never crashed. But keep in mind, the browser wasn’t perfect. Simple things bothered me such as the lack of add on features, inability to auto discover RSS feeds, and huge complications with setting Chrome as the default web browser. these imperfections, while they might seems severe, were nothing compared to dealing with Internet Explorer crashing, and FireFox performing slow. Again, using Chrome is literally like riding on a greased lightning bolt. It’s fast, super fast.

Google Chrome has other important features that I enjoy, such as being able to use the address bar as a Google search bar:

With all that goodness, unfortunately, my use for Google Chrome came to a sudden end when I purchased my first MacBook computer. Talk about bitter sweet feelings. First off, your next computer purchase totally needs to be a Mac. I personally recommend it. I will never use a Windows based computer again. Mac computers are so well built, I had to take a few minutes to figure out how to turn my MacBook off. I literally had my MacBook running for two months before I finally needed to restart it, and I simply didn’t know how to do it.

That said, here’s the conflict. In my opinion, Google Chrome is by far the best web browser available. It blows Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari out of the water. The interface is very clean, simple, and extremely condusive towards a healthy browsing experience. But since I purchased my MacBook, the problem is that Google Chrome hasn’t been available for Mac. The great news is that this has all changed. Google Chrome for Mac is finally available via their early access release channel.

Installing Google Chrome on your Mac computer is very easy. It took me less than a minute. Simply visit the early access release channel. Click on the Mac Tab and proceed to download the Dev Channel: GoogleChrome.dmg. After the file has been downloaded, extract it and then drag the Chrome appliction into your Application folder:

Once Chrome has been installed, you can access it by opening up Finder and navigating to your Applications Folder.

For convenience, you may want to drag the Chrome icon into your Dock. I hope that you’re as happy as I am being able to use Google Chrome again. Now Mac users have the best of both worlds. we can all use the best web browser on the best computer available.

Earlier last month Google introduced Google Sidewiki. Initially, I had a problem with it. Largely, because of two reasons. One, it was available only for FireFox and Internet Explorer via Google Toolbar. And two, users couldn’t syndicate their contributed content on a blog. A few weeks later, Google updated Sidewiki and offered users the option to send comments to Blogger. Somewhat satisfied, but still largely frustrated, I then figured out a way to send Sidewiki Comments to WordPress. At that point, I felt like using Google Sidewiki was worth the effort. But, only one of the two problems I saw were corrected. As it stood, Sidewiki was still not available for other web browsers. Specifically, Safari, Chrome (how ironic), and Opera. That was case up until the last week of October when Google introduced the official bookmarket for Sidewiki.

The official bookmarklet for Sidewiki lets you read and write Sidewiki comments in all web browsers. The bookmarklet is nothing more than a simple shortcut that is dragged into the browser bookmarks bar. When a users click on the shortcut, it opens a new window showing Sidewiki comments for the active page being viewed.

Certain Sidewiki features are not available such as the notification bar. But despite that, I am still very satisfied with the accommodations Google is making for users. And it’s to their benefit too. In other words, offering users the ability to use Sidewiki is all browsers is a feature that should have been available from the get go. Same with sending comments to blogs, and not just limiting the sharing to Blogger either.

Finally, after almost two months, Google Sidewiki has become something that has changed how I contribute and publish content on the web. Every Sidewiki entry I create automatically gets published into my Google Sidewiki Comments category on my blog.

So far you’ve probably noticed that Yahoo! has shut down many of their old services such as Yahoo360 and GeoCities. And then you may have discovered that Yahoo! has released a new marketing campaign, homepage, search engine, and have started going nuts about selling ads in their new search result pages.

A lot is changing with Yahoo!, and even the famous yodel is subject to change. In fact, earlier last week, Yahoo! set up a mobile recording studio in the middle of Times Square and invited anyone passing by to record their version of the yodel. Lucky winners with the best yodel will become famous and earn bragging rights that their yodel is the official Yahoo! yodel. The yodel was one of the things discussed in the interview with Elisa Steele.

She offered assurance that Yahoo! was going to continue using the original yodel; however, to align properly with their promise of making Yahoo! all about about person relevance, they are going to be collecting personal yodels around the globe. In fact, in addition to setting up mobile studios, such as the one in Times Square, Yahoo! has created a web based Yodel Studio.

So you might wonder why would Yahoo! want to re-brand after 15 years of being one of the most widely recognized and successful companies in the world. It may seem strange that Yahoo is investing time and money into creating one of the largest re-branding campaigns ever. Yahoo decided to launch their new brand campaign is to remind consumers where Yahoo! is today, and the kind of services they can offer people in the modern era of the Internet today. Check out this video below that captures the exclusive thoughts of Elisa Steele behind the new Yahoo! marketing campaign.

This Q&A with Elisa Steele is the first in a new series of videos called Yahoo! Yodelcasts, hosted by Nicki Dugan, blog editor for Yahoo!

To stay on top of current events and news about Yahoo! I recommend reading their Yodel Anecdotal blog and subscribing to their RSS Feed. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up a subscription to their YouTube Channel as well.

What are your thoughts about the new Yahoo! and do you think that their new marketing efforts will cause you to switch to using Yahoo! Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Knowing and understanding what people think when they visit your blog or website, and what impressions they have is critical towards building, growing, and maintaining your site. As a site owner, it’s a good idea to open lines of communication with your site visitors. Doing so, enables you to receive vital feedback, which in return can help your site maintain forward direction.

Last year Google released a service called Google Moderator. Matt Cutts made an entry on his blog about it, and six months later the White House even found a use for it. Since then, not much else has been said about the service, nor have many people been utilizing it. Personally though, I think Google Moderator is an excellent tool, and one that you should put to use on your site right away. It’s an excellent instrument where everyone has the opportunity to submit ideas, ask questions, or even offer suggestions. From there, individuals can vote the submitted feedback up or down, which will then display the most popular topics based on total vote count.

Google Moderator is a perfect system for finding out what people think about your blog or website, what you can do or stop doing to enable growth, and what topics or questions could be answered or covered towards continuing to help people that visit your site. All in all, it’s all about feedback, and using Google Moderator is an excellent way to get the best feedback from people who visit your site.

What’s more, Google Moderator can be used to create a feedback system as simple or as intricate as you want. It can be a system that allows site visitors to express their opinions about things, or if you’re a blogger, it can be used as a system that enables you to receive material for covering future topics. To get a general idea of how to use Google Moderator, check out the series called Ask a Google Engineer. Try creating your own series and share it here with everyone in the comments.