SEO News
Choosing an SEO Consultant, and Do You Get What You Pay For?
Randfish at seomoz.org gives a quick rundown on the aspects of choosing a SEO Company / Consultant that suits your needs, and answers the question "Do You Get What You Pay For?" if you choose a one of the big names. Worth a read.
Turn News Feeds into SEO Campaigns
SearchViews have released a potentially useful SEM tool:
It's called FeedCast and it's an all-in-one campaign creation and management solution designed specifically for companies with breaking content. This includes blog networks, newspaper publishers, classified advertisers and pretty much any business who needs to quickly distribute time-sensitive information to a wide audience.
Essentially it auto-magically converts new syndicated content to managed SEM campaigns. I'd imagine many sites will have proprietary stuff to do this type of thing already, but I think this might be the first 3rd party service on offer.
AdSense vs. YPN
The Search Engine Roundtable has a report comparing AdSense and YPN performance.
Spoiler: YPN has the lead, with 81% higher earnings according to the report. If or not YPN's high payout will persist or is simply a short-term incentive to convert AdSense publishers remains to be seen.
"Miserable Failure" GoogleBomb Resurrected
Despite being news way back in 2003, the infamous "miserable failure" story has had a new leash of life. Enough life in fact to warrant another response from Google. Google have changed their tune on the issue somewhat, now calling it a prank as opposed to a reflection of web opinion, as they originally stated to the New York Times in 2003. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch has the full lowdown.
Penalised in Google? How to get back in
For when the unthinkable happens, stuntdubl, and Matt Cutts both offer some sound advice on filing a reinclusion request.
Marketing / Tagging
ThreadWatch points out an interesting piece from Business Week on tagging as a market research tool. From the article:
Then it dawned on him. Del.icio.us could be extremely useful for his business. Wiredset helps entertainment companies develop their digital strategies. By following the tags for a band, Ghuneim could let a record company know the level of buzz after a radio interview or live performance. He could find chatter about budding artists. Essentially, del.icio.us would allow him to listen in on the conversations on the Net that he cared about, minute by minute. He's now obsessed. "There are amazingly few tools I care about on the Web, and this is one of them," Ghuneim says.
Yahoo Search Adds Wayback Machine Links
According to Search Engine Watch, Yahoo have followed Clusty, and Gigablast's suit, by supplementing results with links to previous iterations of pages via the Wayback Machine.
Personally it just seems like more clutter, but I'm sure some will find it a welcome addition.