In the process of talking about what her job entails, the audience development editor for the New York Times underestimates BuzzFeed and how much competition it is -- and how it got there…
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If a high-quality site like Metafilter can be crushed by Google, what hope do other sites have?
Metafilter, a pioneering online community, has been forced to lay off almost half of its moderation staff and is on financial life support after its traffic from Google suddenly declined by 40 percent. The reasons for the drop -- as with most things involving Google -- remain a mystery…
Read MoreLet the video SEO madness begin: Google Trends adds YouTube data
Google Trends just added YouTube search data to its search term database. Many video publishers could use the tool to look for video titles.…
Read MoreGoogle is getting even tougher on sites that abuse links, says report
Google is continuing its effort to punish sites that manipulate outside links in order to increase their search visibility. The move means websites should be careful that their SEO strategies doesn't lead to a penalty.…
Read MorePublishers, your shares data is wrong (part one of two)
Social is the new SEO. But, as publishers turn to social insights to optimize content and fuel revenue, they run into a big problem. The data that they’re looking at is inaccurate. Parse.ly's CEO, Sachin Kamdar, explains why publishers need to take social-as-a-strategy seriously.…
Read MoreRick Santorum's Search Engine Problem Hits The Big Time
Months ago, few Americans had heard of former Senator Rick Santorum or knew that a search of his name brings up an obscene gay sex term. But……
Read MoreKhan Academy goes global with crowdsourced subtitles
Salman Khan's popular educational videos can now be watched with subtitles in up to two dozen different languages, thanks to a cooperation between the Khan Academy and Universal Subtitles. Adding captions not only widens Khan's audience, it could also help to avoid future legal challenges.…
Read MoreWhat’s In An App Name? The Most Popular Words And A Meteoric Rise For Birds
With half a million apps and counting out there, and problems discovering the good ones, it's likely that we are going to start to see some……
Read MoreWhy Matt Drudge Still Beats Mark Zuckerberg
The Drudge Report drives more traffic to news sites than Facebook and Twitter combined, according to a Pew Research Center report. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge Matt Drudge not only as a powerful media presence but also as a great web entrepreneur.…
Read MoreYouTube Launches Live Captions at Google I/O
The Google I/O live video stream will be accessible to hearing-impaired viewers and search engine crawlers alike, thanks to a new live captions feature unveiled by YouTube today. The feature combines manual transcription with automatic translation and will be available to any YouTube Live partner.…
Read MoreWhy Google Needs +1 and Identity to Work Together
The pressure is on for Google to develop a social strategy. It should leverage the combination of +1 and its users’ Google identities to come from behind on the social graph. With the concept of identity, Google starts it's social play from a much stronger position.…
Read MoreHow Online Startups Can Build Audiences on the Cheap
Facebook and search engine optimization are still useful marketing tools for online startups wanting to build audiences. Let’s examine how a startup making consumer apps or online services can get that much-coveted first million or two users as cheaply as possible.…
Read MoreGoogle Employs Users to Help Spot, Block Spam Sites
Google is concluding that if people are up in arms about its perceived declining search results, then it will let them get to work in helping refine its searches. Google announced a Chrome browser extension that lets users block sites from appearing in their search results.…
Read MoreGive Your Website an SEO Health Check With SEO Doctor
Search engine optimization (SEO), the process of optimizing a web page to improve its visibility in search engines, can seem like a complicated business. SEO Doctor, a free add-on for Firefox, can help. It has an easy-to-understand scoring mechanism to help you find potential SEO problems.…
Read MoreApp Marketing 101: Search Engine Optimization
For app developers, the single most important step in preparing an iPhone app for release is to ensure it has been properly optimized for iTunes App Store search. With that in mind, we offer a lesson on the art and science of search engine optimization.…
Read More"Attract Visitors to Your Site": A Short Guide to Improving Traffic
There's probably not much that's new to you in this book. But it's well-written, and at just over 50 pages, it can be read in a hour, and it provides a good introduction to some useful techniques for improving the visibility of web sites.…
Read MoreBig Media or Big SEO Spammers?
Faced with declining revenues and increasingly dismal prospects, some mainstream media outlets are adopting questionable tactics. A liberally funded LA startup is only too quick to help them. The story starts with San Francisco-based sex writer Violet Blue.…
Read MoreApp Store SEO: The Impact of iTunes Web Preview
When iTunes web preview pages first appeared for songs and albums the industry was abuzz with the possibility that iTunes could be…
Read MoreGreat Blog Content vs. Search Engine Optimization
This weekend I was on an “SEO Smackdown” panel at our local WordCamp Portland. Two of us were from the content side,…
Read MoreWeb Work 101: Search Engine Optimization Basics
For any web worker with a blog, web site or online portfolio, knowing how to optimize it for search engines is a…
Read MoreWeb Worker Careers: SEM & SEO
As companies strive to get discovered by customers on the increasingly crowded Internet, demand for the skills of search engine marketing (SEM)…
Read MoreVid-Biz: Sezmi, KickApps, SAG
Sezmi Secures $28 Million; influx of cash comes on the heels of the set-top box company laying off 20 percent of its…
Read MoreSitemasher Provides Cost-Effective Tools for Web Developers
I wasn’t sure what to make of Sitemasher when I first heard of it. With Sitemasher, you can build a web site,…
Read MoreThe Virtues of a Three-Headed Business Plan
I was crazy enough to start two businesses at the same time — OnlyBusiness.com and Polaris Blue. My partner and I run…
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