Truveo

Truveo is one of those video search engines that feature multi-lingual support. It offers Boolean operators support – that is, searches using or, and, and the – mark as well as exact match searches. Another good thing about this platform is that it’s integrated with Twitter so you can also view the most ‘Twittered videos’ along with clips coming from Fox news, blip.tv, Howcast and a number of other video sites.

VideoSurf

Your search engine optimization strategy for video marketing should consider VideoSurf because it aggregates search results from popular video submission sites such as YouTube, Rewer, Dailymotion and MetaCafe. You want to optimize your tags and video description as it comes up with results based from these elements in addition to facial recognition and text searches.

VideoSurf also has a search suggestion features. This helps you refine the results by excluding categories, content types and search channels.

TagBulb

TagBulb also gets its video searches from popular video channels such as Youtube and DailyMotion but what makes it different is it mainly relies on tags for its results. The search results page is mainly just a list of video thumbnails. Search engine optimization people should also take this site into consideration when optimizing their videos, taking care to choose the right keyword tags for their clips. Because it covers a lot of major video sites, you’re assured that your videos will get significant visibility provided that you select your tags wisely.

CastTV

CastTV is a good resource for TV shows, news, movies, viral online videos and celebrity clips. The site features a number of categories and a handy search tool. The results come with source links, description for the video and thumbnails. You also have a lot of filtering and sorting options to streamline your search.

Tagoo

Finally there’s Tagoo, another video search engine that allows you to look for practically every conceivable type of media content. From mp3 audios and music albums to audiobooks and music videos as well as podcasts, this is one site that features a huge database of sites it crawls through. For your search engine optimization strategy with video marketing, you shouldn’t forget to take note the potential of this engine in getting your videos seen.

Google has come up with a more innovative advertising system that is based on Adwords targeting. The strategy is said to elicit improved ROI for advertisers, allowing them to efficiently monetize for various digital content publishers. The school encourages agencies to stop seeing Google Advertising as a threat and, instead, work with it to be more proactive in creating a “suite of integrated direct marketing solutions across multiple platforms which are targeted via demographic research and contextual targeting.” All these, of course, will be manageable through an account set in Google AdWords.

The platform, dubbed AgencyLand, is currently on its beta stages and is used by select ad agencies. Rupal Parekh of AdAge.com writes:

“AgencyLand includes webinars, a searchable library with more than 200 marketing case studies and short, on-demand video segments featuring Google leaders such as Chief Economist Hal Varian. It also integrates Google’s array of ad tools, such as media-planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers and a website optimizer, which helps measure user behavior on web pages.”

Access to the educational portal is free for ad agencies that were selected for testing AgencyLand. These include Digitas, BBDO, Group M, 360i and Razorfish.

AdAge.com writes that while Google maintains that the portal was created to improve advertisers’ digital aptitude, AgencyLand is also a great marketing effort for the company’s part. It encourages those who don’t use or who are wary of using Google for advertising to work with the company instead of against it considering that it’s difficult to ignore the search giant and its potentials altogether. It is a move to convince ad firms that Google is not a threat to their existence but rather another tool that they can use for their campaigns.

According to AdAge.com, Microsoft is also looking at the same route and is also set to launch its own training program for advertising agencies. Dubbed the Digital Academy, the educational portal will apply Microsoft’s ‘three screen approach,’ using the web, television and mobile to provide relevant information and training. Unlike Google’s AgencyLand, the Digital Academy will provide in-person educational sessions through the said approach.

ValidRank

Everyone knows how important link popularity is in SEO. If you want to find out how many sites are linking back to your pages, ValidRank is one tool that you should try. This is a backlink checker that does more than just tell you which sites are linking to you. It also provides additional information like the Page Rank of the pages that are linking back and whether or not the web page uses a nofollow tag. It will also tell you how many outbound links there are on that web page.

You can use Excel 2007’s “Import Web Query” option so you can gather the information provided on the site in a format that is easier to use.

WhosTalkin

This is another SEO tool that you can use to find out who is talking about your website. WhosTalkin goes over various social networking sites such as Facebook, hi5, Friendster and MySpace to gather information. It also checks data from Blogdigger, FriendFeed, Wordpress, Twitter and Google Blog Search to name a few.

SeoQuake SEO

The SeoQuake is an indispensable tool that can help you estimate just how effective and competitive your SEO efforts have become. You can use the tool to analyze your internet marketing campaigns and projects. You can use it for PageRank, to determine incoming links, DMOZ listing and Delicious mentions. You can also use it to find out if your pages are getting bookmarked and if they are getting into the Whois listings. SeoQuake can also help you identify secondary key phrases according to your existing content. It tells you how often you have used the phrase on the page and how it is positioned in the content (i.e. Title, keyword tag or description)

The best thing about these SEO tools is that they make trial-and-error for Internet marketing strategies a lot easier. By using these tools, you can easily determine what part of your campaign works and which one will need to be improved on.

Location matters

Determine where the searcher is located. Keyword tools from Google like Google Trends and Insights For Search help you see where certain search queries are popular, and if there are factors that influence them. These tools also help you see the breakdown of queries by city, state, or country while allowing you to view ads from various locations through the Google Global Plug-in or the Google Ad Preview tool.

Search Demographics

The Insights for Search by Google can also categorize the searches for broader matches of certain keywords. Aside from that, there is a tool by Microsoft that you can use to categorize the content. You can also use Google’s Ad Planner for choosing pre-defined audiences, keywords, and websites for analysis. Quantcast and Microsoft are also offering similar functions based on the keyword or website.

Microsoft also provides a search funnel tool to help you in researching for keywords that they have recently found before or after conducting a keyword search. The company also released an entity association tool that you can use to locate keywords co-occurring in searches, or keywords being searched for similar reasons.

Microsoft also released an online commercial intent tool for estimating whether web pages and search queries are commercial or informational.

GoogleAdWords incorporated the click-through rates in the calculations so you can assume that the major advertisers either pay for clicks or get good click-through rates. To determine the volume of clicks sites are receiving for certain search queries, you can use the keyword destination data of Compete.Com.

Integrating the 3 search types

The study may have problems. For instance, it can be difficult to determine the intent by merely viewing the keyword. Informational queries can become transactional if the information gained the answer he is looking for. For example, searching for “flu symptoms” can become a search for remedies. This is one of the reasons why it can be good to use all query types in an integrated manner.

Web marketing is like establishing tribes and communities. Basically, you are unlikely to get involved in a community of people if you are simply offering transactions. This is one of the reasons why Amazon has incorporated other social aspects and reviews to hook users in various levels, even if their main goal is to sell.

Cybercriminals have become increasingly effective in manipulating search rankings through black hat SEO,identifying popular search queries and pulling newly targeted web pages to the top of the lists. Users are going to start losing their trust on Google’s ability to provide quality search results for queries if this manipulation continues so naturally, the search engine had to do something about it. An inside source told WebProNews that ranking changes are coming up to address this type of spamming.

Security company PandaLabs recently came out with a report that identified more than a million links that targeted malicious web pages which actually ranked for search queries related to vehicle parts. This proves how difficult it must be for Google to provide its users with timely and fresh search results at the same time keep the spammers at bay. Twitter is great for a lot of people because it offers real-time information and its setup isn’t conducive to spam – at least not yet. The social media site still has some degree of control over the accounts created in it.

On the other hand, Google is still unable to control content that is going around the Web and its algorithm has been proven to work effectively at filtering malicious results and spammy web pages. The problem is that originally the Web tends to be more static. These days, the live Web is in itself a challenge because fresh data comes up by the second.

In line with the more interactive and dynamic nature of the web these days, SEO professionals are currently talking about how link velocity seems to influence search engine ranks. Google, naturally, chose not to comment when asked about this new supposed rank driver.

Link velocity refers to the speed at which inbound links are created for a particular web page. It helps explain how black hat SEO practitioners have been able to manipulate the search results. These individuals just created a lot of link spam through comment and discussion areas in many social media sites. The fact that fresh information and popular content is prioritized only worked to help them in this pursuit. They just needed to follow Google News and Google Trends to find out which key phrases they should target.

The abstract reads:

“A system and method for automated search engine optimization (SEO) are disclosed. The automated SEO may analyze search query logs, or a search log database to determine popular concepts/units, which may be automatically utilized to optimize a site or page for search engine results. The site or page is edited based on the automated SEO. In particular, the search log database may provide a unit frequency list reflecting the popularity of various units. The more popular units that are related to the content of the page may be used in the automated SEO of the page. The unit frequency list may be compared with the existing units of a page, so that the more popular concepts within the page may be emphasized.”

Yahoo’s proposed automated SEO essentially includes automatic keyword insertion or replacement. Popular keywords are incorporated into a web page so that the less popular keywords are replaced with similar but more frequently used ones.

There seems to be something terribly wrong about an SEO service provided by a search engine. It screams conflict of interest and this is precisely why Google sold off Performics. “It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business,” Google’s Tom Phillips wrote in the search engine’s blog referring to the company’s plans of selling the company. “Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users.”

This service could give the websites using it an unfair advantage should the application be made available to the public. The application somewhat confirmed this saying, “Based on the relative popularity of particular units (as determined by the frequency with which the particular unit is searched for) the search engine optimizer may make changes to a page to optimize its presence and position in search results for popular searches.”

The SEO community is abuzz with opinions on the ethics of the application. There are those that find it interesting that Yahoo is trying to expand the scope of SEO while Google is going through great lengths to streamline it and minimize it. For its part, Yahoo’s Manager of Corporate Communications says that it’s too early to get worked up by the service because it is still but a patent application.

Social media in SEO

For SEO consultant Todd Malicoat, social media is an important piece in a successful SEO campaign. This marketing strategy allows websites to establish global link popularity – something that is crucial to getting higher search rankings. “Successful social media distribution of high value content has helped solve the issue of not having enough unique linking domains or global link popularity,” says Malicoat.

Other SEO consultants are inclined to agree. According to Joe Whyte, social media marketing makes up a huge piece of the online marketing puzzle along with SEO. He adds that social media works to complement other internet marketing campaigns particularly when it efficiently addresses the site’s targeted audience. Along this line, Joe Griffin says that social media is crucial to creating brand awareness, which in turn, is a key to obtaining top rankings in the long run. Brand recognition builds links to your website which in essence is a part of good SEO. Griffin further notes that link popularity will only be influenced by social media but it will not come from it. If anything, it only triggers brand recognition that will get bloggers, users, forum moderators and resource websites to give you inbound links.

Benefits of using social media such as Twitter and Facebook

Todd Malicoat thinks that an actual use for Facebook in search engine optimization. But he acknowledges the potential of the website as far as content distribution is concerned. This is mainly due to the sheer number of users that are subscribed to this service. When it comes to search engine optimization, there is one goal that any webmaster should keep in mind: to get high distribution of quality content so that the website gets as much quality inbound links as possible. This is regardless of the type of medium or what social medium is used, for that matter.

But Twitter is another story. It has proved to be a valuable SEO tool. “It helps to get your best content in front of the people that will want it in a very timely fashion,” he says.

On the whole, social media marketing does complement SEO efforts in several ways. It all depends on your use of social media sites to target the audience that may be directly interested in what your company has to offer.

In any industry, most especially when you’re working in technology-based ones such as search engine optimization, it pays to be one step ahead. It’s time to plan your moves and think ahead by monitoring industry trends. Foresight is just as important in SEO as in any other business.

You need to future-proof your SEO. This entails having on eye on where this industry is headed so you make sure that your strategies will still maintain their effectiveness so you don’t end up losing a lot of money on tactics that will work only on the short term.

Safety

New SEO tactics may be interesting and effective today but there’s no telling how they would fare a couple of months or even years from now when newer ones have already sprouted. This is why it’s always wise to practice caution when trying out search engine optimization strategies that may not work as effectively in the future. There are certain techniques that may be harmful to your website later on so it pays to be careful of tactics such as the tag stuffing, widget links and sponsored templates among others. Give these strategies a few more months and you are bound to find the word, spam written all over them. You’re going to waste money by investing a lot on them.

This is not to say that they are not worth a try. The idea is to make sure that you don’t make these techniques the core of your SEO strategy.

Predictive

If you’re working in the SEO industry, you might as well understand the comings and goings of tis field. This allows you to stay on top of trends and foresee upcoming ones before they even happen. Simply put, you’ll have to start learning how to be an SEO fortune teller.

Go over the latest trends in this industry and study the behavior of search engines in order to predict where they are headed in the future. Follow their statements closely and always be updated on news and information related to search engine optimization. It also helps to test new things and look up related studies on this field.

Simply put, you need to focus on coming up with strategies that are going to stand the test of time. While it’s good to embrace new ideas, it always pays to stay grounded on the ones that have been proven to work over the years.

Domain authority

There are a lot of factors that determine domain authority: quality and quantity of links, domain rankings on search engines, and the domain’s keyword relevance to the topic. For starters, it’s important to link only to trusted websites. Having your website associated with a page with a low trust profile (as in the case of trashy links) will only hurt the credibility of your own page. Quantity of links is still relative to quality. A thousand links to your site is useless if more than half of these are irrelevant or trashy. A lesser number is better so long as all of them are of better quality.

At the end of the day, it’s all about quality, not quantity of links that you have to your website, that matters in search engine rankings.

Domain rankings

The domain’s rank in the search results will also influence the value of the link coming from that particular domain. To rank for certain targeted keywords, you want to obtain relevant links from a domain that also ranks for the given keywords. This is considered a vote of relevance in favor of your website as far as the key phrases are concerned. In essence, the credibility of the domain you link from spills over to your own website.

This is essentially why it’s important for you to link only to domains that are of high quality and relevance to your site. You want to be associated with all the right sites – preferably the best ones in cyberspace.

Keyword relevance

Some experts believe that domain names containing keywords relevant to a website are considered valuable links. But there are also those who think that a domain still has the potential to rank for keywords that are not in any way related to their name. Take Wikipedia, for instance. Many are more inclined to believe that it’s website authority that is more influential in driving search rankings over keyword relevance. But still, it wouldn’t hurt to give this some thought when link building.

In search engine optimization, the title tag is one of the most important components of a particular web page. Many SEO experts recommend having the keyword phrase you want to rank for in the title tag for your web page to get a good placement. What adds to the importance of the title tag is the fact that it’s the one that users click to get to your website. It has to be clickable – the title tag should be created in a way that would invite clicks from people; hence, it has to read well. Aside from that, the title tag is also displayed prominently on the title bar of the browser, in bookmark tabs and in the user’s favorites which is why it has to be formatted properly.

Simply put, the title tag represents your web page not only in search engines but practically in every corner of cyberspace.

According to search engine optimization experts, it’s still more effective to create short but attractive titles. Just don’t forget to include the key phrase that you want to rank for in it. Most SEOs believe that Google will still rank web pages for key phrases outside the 65 character limit but it’s still a good idea to get the keywords you’re targeting on the first part of the title.

The rule of the thumb in search engine optimization for title tags is to make sure that the most important keywords appear within the first 65 characters of the title. But it’s also important to note that Google has already begun displaying longer descriptions in its search results particularly for longer queries. So maybe longer titles can still work.

At the end of the day, established rules for crafting ideal titles have still yet to be developed. There are long titles that have been known to fare just as well as the shorter ones. For now, it’s safe to assume that everything still relies on keyword placement as far as title tags and SEO is concerned.