By Ron Jones, Search Engine Watch

If not, you may want to read how other educators are using Twitter as an education tool.

For those who are coming up to speed, Twitter lets you broadcast or microblog your messages (140 characters max) to a group of friends or other subscribers, who can receive them as text messages, called a “tweet,” to your subscribers and their mobile phones. Since almost everyone has a mobile phone now this makes Twitter more effective as a communication tool.

Twitter in Academia

David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, was a little apprehensive at first to use social media in the classroom, but after reading an article by Clive Thompson at Wired, he decided to give it a shot.

After giving his students a Twitter assignment one semester, Parry was curious to see how his students would react. He was surprised to see how it helped communicate with his students. After using it more and more he found “that it was one of the better things he did with the class.” He then posted these tips for using Twitter in academia.

Some of the highlights were an increase of “class chatter” as the class started using Twitter to have conversations inside and outside of the class. It seemed to develop a sense of “classroom community” as students began to develop a sense of each other outside the classroom space. Other tips are:

- Instant feedback.

- Track a conference or seminar.

- Follow a professional or famous person.

- Public notepad.

- Writing assignments.

- Grammar.

- Maximizing the teachable moment.

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By Mark Jackson

A company that’s redesigning its Web site recently called me to discuss the possibility of my firm assisting them with their SEO efforts. First, I congratulated them on being one of the few companies to consider SEO prior to re-launching their site (that’s the way it’s done, people!). Then we talked about their domain name.

This company was planning to move their site to a new domain because the old domain (and by “old,” I mean 10 years old) no longer represented the company. As many of us do, they typed in about 100 different domain names into GoDaddy’s search and eventually found an available domain name that was more in line with their core business.

One problem: their domain name choice was absolutely horrible. It had five keywords crammed together. It was confusing, hard to recall, and terrible for branding, SEO purposes, and any other measurement that you wanted to put to it.

But, the domain name only cost $9.99 per year. What a deal, right?

With a little searching, I discovered an unused domain name that was an exact match to their “most important keyword phrase,” was originally registered in the 1990s (good domain age), and had an overall clear history. However, it would cost $20,000.

Their reply probably won’t surprise you: “We can’t afford $20,000 for a domain name!”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

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By Greg Sterling

When Microsoft made its investment in Facebook I always had thought that Live Search would come to the site, together with search monetization. Later it appeared that search wasn’t part of the deal. Facebook’s competitors all have web search, including Google’s much publicized deal with MySpace.

Well today Microsoft announced that Live Search will be coming to Facebook, together with paid search ads.

Here’s the note from Microsoft PR:

Microsoft’s yearly financial analyst meeting, Microsoft SVP, Satya Nadella announced the extension of Microsoft’s U.S. relationship with Facebook to encompass search.

As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook’s customers and advertisers.

This is a big deal for both Microsoft and Facebook, which had no web search prior to this. If Facebook eventually drives a good deal of volume it can help Microsoft gain exposure to users and potentially additional market share over time, but also will drive search revenue. Facebook now has in excess of 100 million users globally.

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Maybe it’s just me, because I’ve spent years ingesting the Purple Cow Kool-Aid. But I can never get over the number of cookie-cutter, copycat businesses that spring up online. Choosing the exact same business model as someone else almost appears to be a favorite pastime in North America these days. Kind of a macho, or at least masochistic, thing. Like training for a marathon, or riding in the Tour de France without Lance Armstrong’s genetics.

And that tough situation leads to an expectation of optimizing implementation of things like paid search campaigns to an almost suicidal level of detail. As I pointed out in an earlier column, this race is damn competitive. By choosing to copy a competitor’s business model exactly, you make the competition that much tougher on both of you.

But for the sake of a frank discussion of the most optimal forms of optimization that a mad optimizer should pursue, I’ll put aside my trepidation about cookie-cutterism and go forward today on the often-true premise that if you really do manage to place first or second in the mad race to optimize everything perfectly, you can make a pretty decent living.

By Andrew Goodman
And when you’re trying to win an Olympic sprint, along with training and eating right, what’s the thing that typically pushes you over the top? Yes, that’s right! Cheating!

In our world, that’s where spying on your competitors comes in. Maybe some of the tools are on the IOC banned substances list, but I don’t expect that to stop you.

Based on a recent experience with Keyword Spy, I thought I’d share with you a few of the things I learned to improve in an account, and a few things that reminded me just how screwed up many of your competitors are. Copying them is a bad idea because many of them are making the same old boneheaded mistakes.

Via SEL

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Ask.com announced that they will be launching “AskEraser,” a feature to allow you to erase your search history.

Searchers who are logged in while searching will be able to easily clear out all their search history data which will ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask. Ask.com said the “privacy settings will be clearly indicated on search results pages.” This feature is currently not live right now, but is expected to be launch sometime this year in the U.S. and the U.K. and globally next year.

Ask.com said the will also implement a new data retention standard that will “completely disassociate search history from a user’s IP address or cookie information after 18 months.”

“AskEraser is a great solution for those looking for an additional level of privacy when they search online,” said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users, and we’re committed to being open and transparent about how such information is used. But we also understand that there are some who are interested in new tools that will help protect their privacy further, and we will give them that control on Ask.com.”

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My mobile phone company in the UK is T-Mobile, and I had to laugh when I was flipping through the latest in-house magazine I got from them. Apparently, as the headline of an advertorial tells me, “Search Engine Optimisation vital to enable business to compete online.” And to learn more, I’m told to check out the Google UK business area that features prominently (though not solely) AdWords.

Really, I was most intrigued by the text of the ad. Here are some pullouts:

Why not ask your web designers or content management team if your site is getting the best from Search Engine Optimisation.

Maybe because someone who does SEO might understand SEO better?

You can improve your ratings in web searches by making sure that your site and its contents are search-friendly. For example, keywords relating to your business should appear regularly in the content, titles and in your ‘meta’ data — the tags and labels inserted into the HTML code.

OK, it doesn’t explicitly says to use the meta keywords tag — which Google doesn’t use — but it gets kind of close

Overall, it’s not a bad ad. Just kind of funny to see Google pushing SEO, rather that AdWords.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Danny Sullivan reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that UK Google AdWords advertisers are being notified by Google that they can no longer accept ads for any kind of gambling site. That includes gambling sites that are just for fun, have tutorials on gambling and content related to gambling.

In an email, Google said, “We will no longer take ads for sites that promote gambling related content or gambling tutorials or whose primary purpose is ‘playing for fun’, gambling or casino games of skill.” Google added that these new rules are “simpler for everyone to understand and more in tune with users’ wishes.”

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There are over 200 signals analyzed by search engines, creating an endless combination of tactics and strategies that can be employed to achieve exposure, rankings, and—by far the most important—conversions.

To successfully deploy these tactics and strategies, however, requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that quality copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today’s SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs!

This is a very good article about how, when and where to invest in SEO.

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