SEO

A report from services firm IHS conjures up a number best served with a grain of salt. Electronic engineering site EE Times reports, “Spurred by Google Glass, IHS Forecasts Nearly 10 Million Smart Glasses to Ship from 2012 to 2016.” The forecast looks past the public-availability launch, expected next year, and predicts the device’s trajectory after that. Quite simply, it all depends on third-party apps. A number of developers have already paid $1,500 for the privilege of early ownership, and early tinkering. Perhaps developers will quickly create a wealth of exciting augmented-reality apps, driving a surge in popularity for the device. Perhaps these apps will change the way we interact with the world forever, and our Glasses will eventually become as essential as our smartphones are now. The rosiest numbers in the report spring from that direction. There are other possibilities, however. Writer Julien Happich shares the predictions’ duller side: “Under a more pessimistic scenario, IHS forecasts that only about 1 million smart glasses will be shipped through 2016. According to this outlook, applications for smart glasses will be limited to some of those already displayed by Google in its Glass marketing. These include scenarios where smart glasses become more of a wearable camera device than a true augmented reality system. In this case, smart glasses will be mainly used for recording sports and other non-casual events, like jumping out of a plane, as demonstrated at the Google I/O developer conference in 2012.” At over $200 million in 2012, the wearable-camera market is nothing to sneeze at, but it is far from the multi-billion-dollar arena Google is after here. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. The future of Glass is in the apps; we’ll just have to wait and see what developers come up with. Cynthia Murrell, June 18, 2013 Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Posted by LindsayToday I’m pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. We’re excited that she’s bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where she’ll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely don’t want to miss her talk, “International SEO and the Future of Your ROI,” if you’re interested in growing your online business.Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon.It’s going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI. It will be beyond the "ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting" type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). It’s meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: “How do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I don’t even speak the language or know anything about the country?” Or, “How can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I don’t have enough resources?”If this is an issue for your business, then it’s highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn't planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets. I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy. Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation?Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! :D (I’m kidding!)I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.)Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely don’t want to miss that.What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why?All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it. Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential. Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you've learned along the way?Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country.Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people.You can have a better understanding of what I’m talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research. What do you do at SEER Interactive?My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, I’m helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, I’m also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients.Tell us about the places you've lived

You have until Monday, June 24 to take advantage of the Early Bird rate to register for the ReelSEO Video Marketing Summit, taking place July 25-26 in San Francisco. A tremendous roster of speakers with diverse areas of expertise in video marketing will be there, so register today!

SEO Research: Harnessing the Power of Google Scholar and Other Academic Databases was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.Make Something Compelling At last week’s SMX Advanced, Google’s Matt Cutts advised site owners that a top priority should be to “make something compelling.” Make something compelling, you say? Sounds familiar, especially when it comes to content. A best practice for any site owner, indeed, is to create unique content that drives traffic and engages users — or, as Matt said, is “compelling.” You don’t want to write something that has been written one thousand times before, or even ten times before. The goal is always to create something that provides useful information, and if your topic has been “done to death,” you need to either approach it from a new and interesting angle, or add new research/information to the existing content on the subject. As Jessica Lee wrote in 2012, “Quality Content Begins with Quality Research. Period. That “quality research,” as Jessica explains, can come from interviews with subject matter experts. It can also come from simply reading. Reading is NOT Optional If you are creating content, you must read. And read. And read. Did you know Bruce reads about industry trends at least two hours each day? Virginia, Chelsea and I also scour the Internet daily, watching videos and reading articles on emerging SEO and SMM trends. Staying on top of current factors makes us better content creators. If you’re a content creator, you must do the same: keep well-informed on anything that matters within your industry, whether that’s restaurant trends, fall fashion, Nascar or — like the writers at Bruce Clay, Inc. — search engine optimization. The Internet at large is a great resource, obviously. If you search Google, you’ll most likely find many blog posts, articles and entire sites dedicated to whatever you queried. Similarly, Google News rounds up all the material coming out of news sources from around the world. But in addition to regular search and Google News, are you taking advantage of scholarly journals? Scholarly Journals Rife with statistics and scientific data, scholarly journals are a goldmine for content (and infographic) creators. Citing statistics, data, or studies that are relevant can help to bolster the credibility of your own content and provide a framework for your own conclusions. Wondering where can you find leading academic research, journal articles and other scholarly materials to pull from? Here are some resources to start with: Google Scholar Google Scholar allows users to comb through multiple databases at once, pulling articles from the the following fields: Business, Economics and Engineering Chemical and Material Sciences Engineering and Computer Science Health and Medical Sciences Humanities, Literature and Arts Life Sciences and Earth Sciences Physics and Mathematics Social Sciences Google Scholar, which debuted in 2004, also has an extensive database of legal documents and patents. When you find what you’re looking for, however, you sometimes have to pay to read the entire article. There are workarounds, however — if you are part of a particular database’s affiliate networks (such as a college or library), you will likely be able to log in for free and read (and cite) to your heart’s content. JSTOR Founded in 1995, JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is an extremely popular database, and an example of one of the databases Google Scholar pulls from. JSTOR offers up more than 8 million articles, boasting articles within these disciplines: Area Studies Arts Business and Economics History Humanities Law Medicine and Allied Health Science and Mathematics Social Sciences As with Google Scholar, you will find that most of these articles require a college student, alumni or library account,

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 17, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google’s Matt Cutts: Stock Images Do Not Impact Search Engine Rankings Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a recent video that using stock images from a stock image website has no impact on rankings. The question was, “Does using stock photos on your pages have a negative effect on rankings?” Matt’s answer was very short, he said “no.” There is no positive or [...] Why You Can’t Miss SMX East – Straight From Your Peers Attend SMX East for essential SEO, paid search and social media tactics that drive traffic and sales. Join us October 1-3 in New York City. How do you know if SMX East is for you? Don’t just take our word for it – read what past attendees have said (full testimonials here)… SMX East in [...] Big Data + Big Math = Big Mess or Big Money? What happens when you combine big data with some big math? Good things, bad things and things we have yet to truly comprehend. Big Data is the most talked about, misunderstood and nebulously defined component of online marketing. Big data can mean anything from large scale consumer behavioral analysis to a relatively simple study of [...] Google Knowledge Graph Carousel Sightings Becoming More Frequent Within A Wider Variety Of Searches While the Google Knowledge Graph Carousel was launched nearly a year ago, more reports are confirming Carousel image displays appearing more often and for a wider variety of categories in SERPs. The Carousel display shows results in an image-focused fashion, listed horizontally at the top of the SERP. The new reports show an updated design, [...] High-Priced Talent Letting You Down? PPC Moneyball Revisited As the summer weather haltingly makes its appearance in my neck of the woods, thoughts turn to on-base averages, fielding percentages and all of that Moneyball stuff. My theme for this column is the woeful underperformance of the team known as the Toronto Blue Jays. Despite a wave of off-season signings and by far the [...] Google Webmaster Tools Adds Google Tag Manager Verification Support The Google Webmaster Central blog announced you can now use a new method to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. Now, you can use Google Tag Manager‘s container snippet code to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. To verify your unverified site with Google Tag Manager, go to the Webmaster Tools home page. [...] The Best Link Building For Local SEO — None! Since Google rolled out the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, numerous sites have been impacted or penalized. Often, companies that incur penalties or experience a drop in rankings don’t have a clue as to what they’ve done wrong — especially small, local businesses. This leads me to a novel proposal: perhaps for local businesses, the best [...] Google’s Mobile “Quick View” Trial Appears To Be Over Google appears to have quietly put an end to a long-running trial that added a “quick view” option next to mobile (smartphone only) search results from select websites. The feature offered searchers a fast way to see a lightweight version of a webpage without having to fully click through and load the page. We first [...] Advanced Authorship: The Deep Dive Up Close Coverage From SMX Advanced 2013 I just attended the SMX Advanced session, “Authorship: The Deep Dive” this morning, moderated by Elisabeth Osmeloski, and featuring speakers: John Carcutt, Advance Digital, Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo, Mitul Gandhi, seoClarity, and Mark Traphagen, Virante, Inc. There were a number of interesting takeaways. Mitul Gandhi is up [...] Google’s Father’s Day Logo Happy Father’s Day, everyone! Google has a special Google logo, aka Doodle, for the day. It is an interactive slot-machine type of Doodle that matches up

Google Analytics announced a redesign of the administration panel. Not only does the new design have a more consistent look and feel, but it should also go a long way to helping users visualize the settings for an account, property and profile.

Video calling via Skype has been live for a while but now you can record and send a free video message to any of your contacts - even if they are not online. The feature has been enabled for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows 8, Blackberry and Windows Desktop.

Summer is officially here which means it’s finally time to go on your highly anticipated summer vacation! Travel logistics are squared away and your bags are packed – you are ready to begin your adventure! Now the only decision that remains is how you are going to spend your precious time on your trip. Finding family friendly activities and where to dine or grab a trendy craft cocktail in unfamiliar cities can be daunting. Join travel expert and founder of the travel website Vagabondish, Mike Richard to learn the tools and hear tips for traveling like a pro. Whether you plan to soak up the sun on a beach in the tropics, navigate through the streets of Rome or go on a cross country road trip, Mike has money saving tricks, tips for planning fun activities, and more to make your vacation as fun and stress-free as possible. Mike is a Rhode Island native and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, hiking and seeing the world. His advice, how-to tips and tall tales from around the world are a go to resources for travelers of all kinds. To participate in the chat follow @Bing, @fareologist and @vagabondish on Wednesday, June 19 from 12-1 pm PT and include the hashtag #BingIt in your tweets. -The Bing Team @Bing