Last week at SES San Francisco, Brent Payne, the SEO Director of the Tribune, shared some of his social media link building tips during the News Search Optimization session.

You had to be there to get the details, but I interviewed Payne about his presentation. Check out the video below to hear what he has to say about Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Link building using social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, at SES San Francisco 2010  Read more... (191 words, estimated 46 secs reading time)

The term “search-engine friendly design” has always been misunderstood by many people: usability professionals, web designers/developers, information architects, advertisers, and even search engine marketers. If you look at this phrase at face value, it seems to mean designing a website for search engines.

Likewise, the term “search engine optimization,” commonly abbreviated as SEO, is equally misunderstood. At face value, it seems to mean optimizing your website for the commercial web search engines. In fact, these face-value definitions are so pervasive that people still dismiss SEO professionals as snake-oil salesmen or people who game the search engines to get top positions.  Read more... (933 words, estimated 3:44 mins reading time)

Elixir Interactive has shared a very unusual online reputation management study. What is unusual is that the interactive marketing agency, which provides online reputation management and search engine optimization services, and it’s well-respected CEO and President, Fionn Downhill, are the targets of a mean-spirited and scurrilous attack.

Now, I’ve know Downhill since 2003, when she founded Elixir Interactive. She served on the board of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and was a founding member the SEMPO Institute, which was launched to provide first class training for the search engine marketing industry worldwide.  Read more... (777 words, 1 image, estimated 3:06 mins reading time)

Last week, I reported that six out of 10 news executives think the Internet is changing the fundamental values of journalism. Well, news search engines and social media are also changing industry best practices in newsrooms, too.

At SES New York 2010, there were two sessions that highlighted these changes. One was entitled, “News Search Optimization,” and the other was entitled, “Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News.”

Among the speakers at these sessions were Topher Kohan, SEO Manager, CNN; Matthew J. Brown, Director of Search Strategy, New York Times Company; and Allison Fabella, SEO & Social Media Manager, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Read more... (670 words, 2 images, estimated 2:41 mins reading time)

At SES London 2010, I moderated a session entitled, “Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News.” It focused on specific aspects of SEO for large media companies.

The panelists discussed the tools that media companies use to help them rank well for breaking news keywords. They also talked about how to capitalize on social media opportunities that exist within news content to help media companies to do well on sites such as: Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.

Following the session, I interviewed one of the speakers: Paul Roach, the Technical Lead for SEO at guardian.co.uk.  Read more... (173 words, 2 images, estimated 42 secs reading time)