It’s the biggest search news of late and it’s got website owners across the U.S. and Canada anxious to see if their SEO rankings will bounce or bottom out as a result. On August 31, Yahoo disabled its API key in Rank Tracker and officially switched to Bing technology. Unofficially dubbed “Binghoo,” the combined Bing and Yahoo search engines account for about 5.2 billion monthly searches – a nice chunk of the market, though still no match for Google.  Still, it’s a strong competitor in the overall search market, and there are ways to leverage the Yahoo-Bing merger to help maintain or improve your SEO results.

If your SEO efforts primarily are focused on keywords, know that keyword search habits of Yahoo, Bing and Google users may vary. Differences exist when it comes to the criteria that Google and Bing use to rank sites as well. For instance, Bing tends to give more weight to domain age, topical relevancy and outbound linking than does Google. Inbound links that feature your target keywords in anchor texts prove even more effective on Bing than on Google. And Google favors sites with steady feed of fresh blog content, whereas Bing gives search preference to major news sites than to blogs.

AppSoft Web Design’s SEO engineers can help determine the right keyword mix, inbound/outbound link strategy and other search result-boosting tactics to ensure high rankings in both the Google and Yahoo/Bing search results. Get a quick start on climbing the Binghoo search ladder. Contact AppSoft Web Design at 800-736-9112 or via our online email form today.

Turns out the Old Spice Guy is more than the latest quasi-celebrity to get your girlfriend’s attention – he’s a social media phenom that has helped buoy sales of the men’s antiperspirant and fragrance line significantly. According to Dean McBeth, a digital strategist for ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, sales of Old Spice body wash have risen 55% and some SKUs are up as much as 1,900%.

McBeth spoke at the 140 Characters Conference in San Francisco August 19, detailing the success of the ad campaign featuring the chronically shirtless, no-longer-struggling actor Isaiah Mustafa starring as “The Man your Man Could Smell Like.” The campaign, which landed this year’s Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial, obviously targeted men by way of the women in their lives. And it worked like a charm. It featured a television ad and numerous YouTube videos wherein Mustafa answers fan questions – including one from ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos on how President Obama could reconnect with female voters (928,468 views at the time of this posting). As of the time of the conference the campaign had received 1.5 billion impressions since its February launch, including 130 million video views. Old Spice Twitter followers were up 3200%, Facebook interactions had jumped 800-1,000%, Google searches were up 2,200% and traffic to the Old Spice website had risen 350-500%.

Mustafa, a former NFL wide receiver, is fielding film and TV offers. He has signed on for a leading role in Madea’s Big Happy Family, the newest installment in Tyler Perry’s Madea Franchise which started with Diary of a Mad Black Woman; and in a role in Horrible Bosses alongside Jennifer Anniston, Jason Bateman, Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. He’ll also appear in the NBC TV series Chuck.

While we can’t promise an Emmy Award or film roles with A-list costars, AppSoft Web Design can help boost your company’s sales with a professionally produced commercial or PSA and / or a targeted social media campaign. Developed specifically for search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), our social media campaigns include management of your company’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn presences, plus keyword-rich blogging that will drive web viewers to your site and new customers to your click or brick stores. To find out how you can leverage the same tactics as the Old Spice Guy, contact Devan Stuart or Rachel Kuncicky at 904-241-9777 or 800-736-9112.

Once upon a time, search engine optimization (SEO) worked on a few proven techniques heavy on keyword placement and links. For the savvy web marketer, these few steps could place a website atop Google and other search engine rankings relatively easily, generating traffic and sales. No more. Today’s SEO is a much more complex animal with more factors playing important roles in the success of online businesses and ecommerce sites. The three most critical factors in the transformation of SEO over the past few years are the need for high quality content, social media and online video.

High Quality Content: One-time keyword stuffing works in SEO today like your mother’s 8-track cassettes work on your MP3 player. It simply doesn’t. Both search engines and live visitors today look for well-written and informative content, including website copy and blogs, that makes their visit to a site worthwhile. They want information and details that are updated regularly. Nothing will send a web visitor elsewhere quicker than recognizing a static site that hasn’t offered anything new in months.

Social Networking: Social networking websites have made such an impact that the words “Facebook me” are replacing “email me” among not just friends but business associates as well. Tens of thousands of businesses today use social networking profiles to more easily communicate with their audiences, grow their audiences and drive those audiences to their main websites and into their stores. A social media presence helps boost customer satisfaction by offering a perceived closeness to an actual individual than does an email form on a company’s primary website or a 1-800 number that takes customers through a maze of recordings and dial options before reaching someone who can listen and help. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter also help companies monitor the “buzz” about their products and services and tailor their overall marketing campaigns accordingly.

Online Video: Companies increasingly are using online video for SEO, informational, instructional and promotional purposes.  Once expensive and difficult to produce, high-quality video now is possible with affordable equipment and minimal training. Even a simple video, optimized appropriately, can help boost a company’s SEO ranking. Commercials, infomercials, how-tos and client testimonials all are effective ways to use online video to boost SEO efforts for online businesses.

AppSoft Development, headquartered in Jacksonville Beach, FL with operations in Orlando and California, can help improve your company website’s SEO with regularly updated, high quality, keyword optimized content and management of your social media profiles. Our in-house production team can write, shoot and edit your online video as well. To bring your SEO efforts up to date, contact AppSoft Development at 800-736-9112.

The rumor mill is churning about Google Me, Google’s much speculated social network. Word on the street is that the search engine giant is close to announcing the launch of the nation’s next big name in social networking, designed to be a full-on competitor to Facebook.

Thus far, there’s no official confirmation from Google’s Mountain View, CA corporate office. But Digg CEO Kevin Rose and former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo among other insiders claim Google Me is indeed coming down the pike.

“This is not a rumor. This is a real project. I am completely confident about this,” D’Angelo said in a recent post on Quora, the Q&A site he founded. “They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook. Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google. They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.”

If the rumors are true, Google has quite a challenge on its hands, particularly considering the limited success of Buzz (Google’s answer to Twitter) and Orkut, Google’s first social networking experiment that proved popular in India and Brazil but never took off in the U.S. Facebook today is 500 million users strong, having toppled MySpace as the world’s most popular social networking site in April 2008. Google Me’s success could mean a strong new player in not only the social networking arena, but in SEO and SEM as well. A spectacular failure, however, might make Facebook even stronger.

Incidentally, Google Me is said to be the social network’s working title. No word on whether it was inspired by “Google Me,” the 2009 documentary by filmmaker Jim Killeen, starring seven other guys named Jim Killeen.

It’s difficult to accurately document history as it is being made, especially when it changes overnight. If you’ve been involved in search engine marketing over the past ten years, then you’ve already seen a lot of change. In fact, you’ve likely come to expect it. When Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs recently announced his company’s change in direction regarding the support of Flash video on iPhone applications, many bloggers jumped at the chance to announce the “Death of Flash”. Fortunately, sensationalized headers and tags don’t tell the real story.

The real story is more likely engulfed in very boring legal issues between major companies that battle every day for billions of dollars in market share. The truth is portable computer devices have always had an eternal need for longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries. The truth is Apple has historically announced its intentions to follow the beat of a different drummer. The truth is Adobe Flash has already earned its rightful place in web history. After all, without the magic of easy-to-program Flash applications, the Internet might still be a static world of glorified print-style advertising pages.

Since the mid-1990s, Flash software applications have provided web programmers with the tools they needed to make business websites appealing, easier to use and much more interactive. So, long before Google became the “Sultan of Search” and over ten years prior to Apple’s introduction of the iPhone, Adobe Flash was already a valuable asset for corporate and e-commerce websites worldwide. An object-oriented language on a multimedia platform that allowed millions of self-trained programmers to manipulate graphics and stream audio or video files.

Now, over fifteen years later, Adobe is releasing Flash 10.1, which is primarily aimed at mobile device partners like Android, BlackBerry, Palm webOS, Windows Phone 7, LiMo, MeeGee and Symbian smart phones . . . almost every major player except the Apple iPhone. Although Google has announced their intentions to switch their YouTube mega-video site from Flash to HTML5, it is obvious the mobile division of Google still plans for their smartphones to remain flexible in displaying web content. However, that too may be more of a marketing decision considering the enormous number of existing websites that display Flash components.

As for historical significance, only time will tell who the winners and losers were, but that’s true for every release or new version of any developer’s software. In fact, the big winner in the mobile market for web applications may not even exist at this time. Once dominant computer software companies like Ashton Tate and Lotus 1-2-3, are only a fading memory of what was. But, don’t count Adobe or their “Hall of Fame” software out of the game just yet. A desktop version of Flash 10.1 and a gazillion loyal users may still have a lot to say about how this chapter in Internet marketing history ends.

This year the month of June has become the “Silly Season” for the Internet world with major players, like Google and Microsoft or Apple and Adobe, actively competing for media attention and the web’s spotlight. Although no one upstairs is talking free agency or salary caps, high tech companies are jumping in-and-out of bed with each other faster than soap opera stars on daytime television. So, are we suppose to believe that Google has just realized Microsoft software is vulnerable to being hacked or that Apple suddenly discovered Flash files consume energy?

Come on! There’s seldom a single reason for any split or separation but there is typically the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the case of Google, the fact that the search engine giant was hacked in China due to a flaw in Microsoft’s Internet browser would seem to be that straw. At least, that’s what Google said. It is true the Chinese used a “worm hole” in IE6 to gain access to personal data about anti-government activists, but is that the real reason for Google’s in-house ban of Windows? In business, they always say: “If you’re looking for the truth, follow the money”.

So how do the dollars and cents stack up? Let’s see. There are roughly 20,000 employees at Google meaning the company pays Microsoft a fair amount of money in licensing fees for using their Windows product. Then again, millions of business users also have to pay to use what has become the most popular piece of software in computer history. Chances are those same users also know about the Microsoft browser’s security issues and previous email attacks. Does this mean everyone is going to buy a Mac or convert his or her PC to Linux? Probably not, at least not anytime soon.

Chances are quite a few Google employees already use Mac OS because of the technological advantages of the Apple for doing certain tasks. Moreover, Google reportedly said, ” . . all new employees would be allowed to choose between Mac OS or Linux”, so we really don’t know how many workers at Google will still be working in Windows every day. In addition, Google’s decision to change operating systems might have more to do with forcing their employees to use Google’s beta operating system than it had to do with security issues in the Far East. After all, it has to be time for somebody at Google to start debugging the OS software or the company will have problems of their own.

As for the privacy issues in China, Google or any other media operating on the Chinese mainland is going to have to play by Communist rule. The government is just not interested in granting freedom of speech in exchange for search engine result pages. In fact, Kai-Fu Lee, President of Google Greater China,  outlined several business challenges that Google currently faces.  During his recent lecture at Carnegie Mellon University, he pointed out that the average age of an Internet user in China is twenty years younger than in the United States; the software piracy rate is 96%; there are 2 credit cards for every 100 people; and China has approximately 2.5 times the number of mobile phone users, and most have never touched a PC.

Only time will tell what impact Google’s decision to drop Microsoft’s Windows will have on either company’s bottom line. Maybe this means Google has left the door wide open for Bing to take over organic search in China, after all, MSN has been there since 2004 and ranks second as a provider of instant messaging services. On the other hand, maybe Google just discovered what Yahoo, AOL, eBay and Amazon had already learned from their disappointing business ventures with the Chinese. Regardless, it seems less likely that Google stopped using Windows because of Asian hackers and more likely the Sultan of Search is positioning products for future market share.

There has never been a more confusing medium than the World Wide Web. As a conscientious business manager, chances are you’ve kept up with how traditional marketing is accomplished using print media, radio and television. After all, there are dozens of publications dedicated to making certain you stay informed of the best approach for advertising your products and services. Unfortunately, when most of us try to make heads or tails of Search Engine Marketing, we find the Internet is overrun with ambiguous and often contradictory information about “what to do” and “what not to do”. In many instances, businesses fail to take advantage of online opportunities out of fear their website might be permanently penalized due to mistakes they might make in ignorance.

The bad news is many of the horror stories you may have read about did happen. The good news is Google doesn’t have a lot of interest in becoming the Gestapo for the web world. In fact, most of the severe penalties handed out by the Sultan of Search were likely well deserved. It may seem ridiculous that a definitive book hasn’t been written to outline the exact details for Internet Marketing success but the truth is such a book would be out of date before it could reach the shelves of your favorite store. Search Engine Marketing is truly an evolving medium that has never followed the conventional phases of media development. With that in mind, the purpose of this article will be to de-mystify the most basic principle of organic search and to discuss simple steps that will help Google’s spiders (algorithms) find your website, index the content and determine your site’s rank on their result pages.

Google’s guru of spam defense, Matt Cutts, has always said, “Just tell us what it is that you do”. That sounds simple enough but companies who write their own web copy often forget to include the “key” words that customers are most apt to use when searching for information about their products and services. This is the first critical error. The second critical error comes when in-house writers fail to check the monthly search volume for the keywords that they intend to use in the site’s web copy. Since we don’t speak the same as we write, the same popular words or industry terminology a consumer uses in person or over the phone may be quite different than those used when typing into a search box online. You can do your own keyword research using Google’s free keyword and Adwords tools. Start by making a list of short phrases (two to four words in length) that describe what you do and/or what you sell.

Keep it simple. Users seldom use fancy phrases or cool lingo when they type search strings. There is also a tendency for users to avoid words that are difficult to spell or long words with lots of letters. On the other hand, search engines are becoming user friendly for queries entered as questions and search strings based on specific product names or model numbers. In the beginning don’t bother with elaborate keyword strategies for identifying untapped web traffic. Instead, make certain your web copy has a nice sprinkling of the words that you believe your customers will use when searching for your products and services. Then, use the free resources available to check that these words have adequate monthly search volumes. For most business applications, probably two dozen keyword phrases will be more than enough to get started.

Provided your website loads quickly, has good information and is easy for users to navigate, chances are very good that both the spiders and humans will like it. If you do not have the expertise to write your own original web copy, you should consider using a professional web design or search engine optimization firm. In the long run, it will save you a lot of time and money. Plus, most copywriters are very familiar with interpreting keyword research and know which search strings are most effective when used for web pages, articles or blogs. Don’t let confusing web articles keep you from pursuing business opportunities online. Give AppSoft a call today at (904) 241-9777 to speak directly with a Search Engine Optimization specialist about your specific marketing needs.

It’s been just over a week since its launch and the new Facebook “Like” button has proven a new force majeure in online search. The new button replaces the “Become a Fan” button and allows Facebook’s 400 million members to recommend websites, news stories, blog posts and music to friends. As of Wednesday, more than 50,000 website had implemented the new Like plugins as part of their web marketing strategies, according to Facebook’s blog for application developers.

What does this mean for your website and web marketing? By placing the Facebook Like button on your website, you allow visitors to recommend your site to their Facebook friends, who likely will pass it along to other Facebook friends and so on. These recommendations, which show up as posts on Facebook profiles, drive traffic back to your website, significantly boosting your web marketing efforts at little or no cost.

Consider that in March – after just six years in existence – Facebook surpassed Google as the site with the most U.S. visits; that Facebook today is the top source for traffic to major news and entertainment portals; and that the phrase “Facebook me” is replacing “E-mail me,” according to many entrepreneurs. If your company has yet to integrate Facebook and other top social networking platforms into its web marketing strategy, you are missing out on an already huge web marketing opportunity that is expected to grow exponentially and give search engine giant Google a run for its money, many Internet experts say.

Successful use of social media as a web marketing tool for your company involves much more than simply creating a static fan page or profile. The key to success is in consistent updating, promotion and interaction with your fan/friend base.  Many smaller companies are unsure how to most effectively use Facebook and other social media platforms, and many more find they simply lack the time or human resources to consistently manage their social media marketing efforts. AppSoft Web Design’s web marketing professionals know all the ins and outs of a highly successful social media campaign. We offer management of your social media web marketing efforts including creating and maintaining Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages, YouTube channels and blogs with search engine optimized entries. If you’re ready to take full advantage of the social media web marketing phenomenon, call AppSoft Web Design’s Devan Stuart or Rachel Kuncicky at 904-241-9777 or toll free at 800-736-9112.

Google search functions are getting increasingly social. This month, Google added image searches to its Social Search experiment, allowing for ever more personal searches. Soon, your image search results will include related images and web content from your friends and online contacts.

For instance, say you’re thinking of getting a dog. You’ve got a small apartment, so you want a small dog. You do a Google search for “small dog breeds” and Google turns up all the usual, expected results, including articles by pet experts, pet stores, dog trainers and the like. However, you’ll also find images and web content posted by your friends. If a friend of yours has written an article or blogged about Chihuahuas, that article or blog page will appear under a special heading called “Results from your Social Circle.”

Now that Social Search has been added to Google Images, you’ll see results there as well. For instance, if a photographer friend of yours has posted photos he’s taken of a client’s Pomeranians on his professional website or a neighbor has posted pictures of her miniature dachshunds on her Facebook page or on a web photo sharing site such as Flickr or Picasa Web Albums, these images will appear under the “Results from you Social Circle” heading as well.

The screenshot of images also will include links titled “My Social Circle” and “My Social Content.” Click and you’ll be taken to one of two new Google interfaces. Clicking on “My Social Circle” shows your extended network of social contacts. “My Social Content” takes you to a list of your public pages that may appear in your friends and contacts’ social results.

Thus far, Goggle’s Social Search functions are available to everyone in beta on google.com. Social Search for images and the two new interfaces launched only recently, so it may take several days for your connections and content to update. Currently, they’re available in English only to all signed-in users.

Google this week launched three new enhancements to its search results: hours and menus, informational snippets about events, and highlighted answers to search questions. Each promises to boost your search experience by delivering targeted information in record time.

Of the three new enhancements, the most used likely will be the hour and menu information that pops up in universal searches. Think about every time you’ve searched for a particular store and had to wade through pages of info until you found the page that listed the store’s hours of operation. Now, by entering the store’s name, city and the word “hours,” you’ll get a universal Google search local result with the hours immediately listed. Here’s what we found when we Googled a client using the query “Garcia Institute Jacksonville Beach hours.”

When it comes to restaurants, a website that shows a few photos and gives great verbiage about the chef, the décor and the local jazz band that plays on Friday nights just doesn’t cut it. Even if it’s a restaurant/lounge, the “restaurant” part comes first. And chances are you’re hungry. You want to know what’s on the grill and you want to know now. Take a look at the Google local results we got when we searched “A1A Ale Works St Augustine menu.”

The Rich Snippets function delivers brief annotations that webmasters make summarizing what’s on the page. Rich Snippets for reviews, including restaurant and movie reviews, and people already were in place. Now, we’ve added Rich Snippets for events such as concerts movie show times. Type in an event type and the city and you’ll see a short list of events with snippets of information including dates, locations and links to the official event pages. Of course, much of this depends on webmasters implementing the new markup on their pages. You’ll see this happening more frequently as time passes. Here’s what turned up when we searched “concerts in Jacksonville FL.”

When you type your search in question form, Google’s new answer highlighting function is designed to deliver the most likely simple answer to your fact-based question in boldfaced type within the search results. This function is meant to provide quick answers that are fact based. For instance, “When was the Internet invented” will deliver better results than “Why did Carl Perkins write ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’” and the latter will do better in search results than “What makes a hero.”