Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories?

In a blog, is it worth spending time creating tags and categories for SEO purposes?

What are some effective techniques for building links?

@mattcutts from Google....

Organic link building, according to me is one of the most difficult tasks for SEOs of SMEs. Can you please list 5 effective ways of organic link building.

NuVal Nutritional Scoring System at Market Street Grocery Stores

Learn about the foods you eat at Market Street

Market Street - Where Everyday Meets Gourmet

Market Street is like a regular grocery store (u know they have toilet paper and paper towels) but with super cool organic gourmet foods and organic groceries and wine.

How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

"If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?"

How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time - NYTimes.com

How To Find People To Follow On Twitter

"While many of us in the marketing world tend to focus on how many followers we have and how to get more, for many Twitter users the other side of that coin is a real challenge: How do I find good people to follow on Twitter?"

How To Find People To Follow On Twitter

Google Maps Incorrectly Indexing Company Info

"Google Maps could start generating substantial revenue for the Mountain View, Calif., company and related businesses, but the search engine will need to more closely tie the app to geographic-location targeting on mobile and work out the bugs. According to several SEO professionals patiently waiting for a fix, citations have been spotted showing up under the wrong business in Google Maps."

MediaPost Publications Google Maps Incorrectly Indexing Company Info 03/15/2010

Historic Galveston Hotel Completes Second Floor Renovation

"Hotel Galvez & Spa, A Wyndham Grand Hotel, has unveiled its beautifully appointed new second floor guest rooms. In preparation for the hotel’s 100th anniversary in 2011, hotel owners George Mitchell and the Mitchell family are updating all guest rooms with a new d�cor."

Historic Galveston Hotel Completes Second Floor Renovation in Preparation for 100th Anniversary / Mitchell Historic Properties Pressroom

Mobile App

The Google Voice mobile app allows you to place calls that show your Google number as the outbound caller ID, make cheap international calls, and visually navigate between voicemail messages

What is Google Voice?

Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text. Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls. To start enjoying Google Voice, just give out your Google Voice number. You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Do what you love (no excuses!)

At the Web 2.0 Expo, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk gives a shot in the arm to dreamers and up-and-comers who face self-doubt. The Internet has made the formula for success simpler than ever, he argues. So there's now no excuse not to do what makes you happy.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Do what you love (no excuses!) | Video on TED.com

Uptown dallas apartment cleaning services

A video i shot after i hired Cowboys Cleaning to clean my apartment in addison... i am moving have been using them for 3 or 4 months now.. I feel confident in getting my deposit back and not being hassled after i move with going back to old apt and cleaning.. HOORAY!!! totally worth the price!

Google Reader - Play

"Welcome to Google Reader Play, a fun, fast way to browse the most interesting stuff on the web, personalized just for you.

We'll keep track of the things you star, like, or share, and we'll show you more stuff you'll like the next time you use Reader Play."

Google Reader
-
Play:

What Google Apps Marketplace Means To Cloud Computing

"Encouraging businesses to embrace cloud computing, Google unveiled an enterprise apps marketplace late Tuesday. The long awaited Google Apps Marketplace will allow third-party application developers to build, upload and sell apps in the store. Google will charge a one-time $100 fee for as many applications the company chooses to post, give away or sell. If the developer chooses to sell the app, Google gets 20% of the revenue."

MediaPost Publications What Google Apps Marketplace Means To Cloud Computing 03/10/2010

PubCon Search Marketing Conferences 2010

"Online PR intersected with Search Marketing years ago. Today we find it even more intertwined with Social Media. Brands, products, and executives are frequently discussed on Social Media sites. This session will focus on the connection between Press Relations and Social Media – the responsibilities and the possibilities."

PubCon Search Marketing Conferences 2010

Information Architecture at IMSB (repost)

: "For those of you who don’t already know…. Information Architecture is the way a website is organized to make it user-friendly as well as search-friendly. You want users to not only easily discover the site, but be able to follow the information on the site so they can easily get to their ultimate destination."

Information Architecture at IMSB - Build it & They will Come | Social Desire

Google - public data explorer

"​The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings."

Google - public data

Segment Your Way to PPC Success

"Segment Your Way to PPC Success (Search Engine Strategies Webinar with David Szetela)"

Segment Your Way to PPC Success (Search Engine Strategies Webinar with David Szetela) | Maine SEO Blog

Google, transparency and our not-so-secret formula

"Recently the European Commission opened a preliminary inquiry into competition complaints. Part of the complaint alleges that Google operates without sufficient transparency into how and why web sites rank in our search results. The notion that Google isn't transparent is tough for me to swallow. Google has set the standard in how we communicate with web site publishers. Let me tell you about some of the ways we explain to sites how we rank them and why."

European Public Policy Blog: Google, transparency and our not-so-secret formula

Cool websites now invaded by a bouncing Ti-double-grrrrr!

"Evony - Evony is a massively multiplayer online real time strategy game (MMORTS). It is highly popular because it is a persistent world. The landscape does not change each game or each time you log in, but rather you control your fledgling kingdom and direct its affairs. Your subjects will continue building, gathering, researching and laboring even while you are away. You may complete quests, attack barbarians or rival players, form alliances, achieve rank and title and expand your kingdom. Raise your Prestige and vanquish your foes. Your destiny is in your hands."

http://www.evony.com

Google's SEO Report Card

"How many of Google's web pages use a descriptive title tag? Do we use description meta tags? Heading tags? While we always try to focus on the user, could our products use an SEO tune up? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer with Google's SEO Report Card."

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google's SEO Report Card

The RFID Hacking Underground

"James Van Bokkelen is about to be robbed. A wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen will be the latest victim of some punk with a laptop. But this won't be an email scam or bank account hack. A skinny 23-year-old named Jonathan Westhues plans to use a cheap, homemade USB device to swipe the office key out of Van Bokkelen's back pocket."

Wired 14.05: The RFID Hacking Underground

Need RFID ENCRYPTION?

SEO Tools - the Ultimate Collection

"Online SEO Tools – the Ultimate�Collection

All tools listed below fall under the following criteria:

they are all useful for SEOs;
they are all web-based (no desk-top ones or FireFox extensions so far);
they are all free."

SEO Tools - the Ultimate Collection | Search Engine Journal:

Facebook patents News Feed; sets stage for fight against social peers | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

"Facebook on Tuesday was awarded a patent for a social network news feed, setting the stage for a future battle with its social networking peers over similar technologies.


The patent is specifically for “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network” and effectively grants Facebook the opportunity to pursue other social networks who it deems are infringing on the company’s patent, reports AllFacebook."

Facebook patents News Feed; sets stage for fight against social peers | Between the Lines
| ZDNet.com

Products - Webmaster Tools Help

"Google is experimenting with markup for product data. We do not currently display this information, unless the product is part of a review.

Properties

Each product can have a number of different properties, such as name, category, price, and brand. You can use either microformats or RDFa markup to label these properties.

Google recognizes the following product properties. In general, you can use the same property name for both microformats and RDFa. (Where the RDFa and microformats property names differ, the microformats property name appears in parentheses.)"

Products - Webmaster Tools Help

Ruud Questions: Hugh Macleod aka Gapingvoid

"don't remember why exactly but Gapingvoid, as I think of him, was among the batch of first people I started to follow on Twitter. He seemed to be in some kind of smart crowd; the kind of crowd I like to follow to learn from. When I learned Who He Is I liked the fact that he replied to regular people (like you and me) on Twitter. Probably he's one of those himself; regular people."

Ruud Questions: Hugh Macleod aka Gapingvoid | Search Engine People | Toronto

Cool Websites Organization - Formerly known as Paisley's Cool Sites now invaded by a bouncing Ti-double-grrrrr!

"February 2010 - Bridging the gap between Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA Cool Websites. Valentine's Day for some, way too many birthdays on such a short month, search engines, social media, blogs, and HTML. Bing, Ping wi-fi, Dallas and Atlanta restaurants, Oysterfest, Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wine, Road Trips, and a Pub Crawl."

The CrunchGate 100 – A Puppet Speaks - 1938 Media

"Well boys and girls all good things must come to an end and now its time for this this good thing to end. Don’t be sad though it’s not the end of Techcrunch saying and doing stupid things. I promise you that that will always continue. Maybe."

best part: "Techcrunch is nothing more than a guys website. No different than your own really, except you probably have a lot more integrity. "

The CrunchGate 100 – A Puppet Speaks - 1938 Media:

Official Google Blog: A picture's worth a thousand (translated) words

"Imagine being in a foreign country staring at a restaurant menu you can't understand, a waiter impatiently tapping his foot at your tableside. You, a vegetarian, have no idea whether you're about to order spaghetti with meatballs or veggie pesto. What would you do? Well, eventually you might be able to take out your mobile phone, snap a photo with Google Goggles, and instantly view that menu translated into your language."

Official Google Blog: A picture's worth a thousand (translated) words

Will Google offer ranking reports?

Google Webmaster Guidelines say "no automated queries"

i don't use any...

Google Buzz monitoring

"Not everyone knows you can search Buzz, so for starters look up to the top of Gmail when you click on 'Buzz': the search box switches from 'Search Mail' to 'Search Buzz'. You can type any query into the box, and it will search all public Buzz posts from all users for that query. There's likely some good stuff amongst the millions of posts.

But that's not enough: if you have more than one or two queries, or you want to periodically check in, it'd be nice to return to these queries once in a while to see what's new. Here's what I do:"

Rick Klau's weblog: Google Buzz monitoring

Google Buzz tips and tricks

"Reactions to Google’s new social networking tool, Buzz, appear to be divided between those who think it will topple Facebook and�those who have already discounted it.

If you still haven’t made up your mind yet about Buzz, here are some useful tips for customizing and automating the service so that it can work with your other social networks. We’ll also look at some ways to share messages and links via Buzz with specific groups, which could make it a useful tool for the workplace."

Google Buzz Tips and Tricks – WebWorkerDaily

Andy Beal - Reputation Management Trackur

There are 3 of us (myself, Andy Beal and Lee Odden), who truly get the "power" we have.. and yet we choose to shout until our voices are hoarse about ORM. I took a moment or rather Andy took a moment out of his busy schedule to answer some quick ORM questions:

@steveplunkett: You have listed yourself as a "reputation management consultant", why do people need one?

That's a great question. When I give seminars on the topic of online reputation management, I often ask the audience how many of them don't believe they have an online reputation. If anyone dares to raise their hand, I threaten to go and write a negative blog post about them, to prove they have one!

And that's the message. We may not all have a recognizable brand, but we do all have an online reputation--and you could argue that the lack of a reputation, could be just as damaging as one that's tarnished.

Whether you're applying for a job, seeking venture capital, looking for a date, or trying to win your one thousandth customer, you can bet that someone, somewhere is Googling you, or asking their social network what they think about you.

I help individuals and companies to present themselves online in the best possible light.

@steveplunkett: ORM stands for Online Reputation Management, if you were to define that term, what would it be?

When I wrote Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online no one had come up with a definition for online reputation management, so I created one. Two years later, I believe it stands up well:

Online reputation management ~ realizing that the perceived value of your brand is defined by information found and discussed on the internet; therefore requiring your constant monitoring and participation in these web conversations

@steveplunkett: How did you come up with Trackur?

Once my book was published, I realized that we didn't find many online reputation monitoring tools that were a natural step-up for someone that had outgrown Google Alerts. You went from free to thousands of dollars a month. I wanted to fill that void and I wanted to create a tool that could be set up in just a matter of minutes. One month later, I publicly launched Trackur, and today it provides reputation monitoring for just $18 a month, with a learning curve of just 60-seconds!

In fact we have video that shows just how quickly Trackur can be set-up: http://www.trackur.com/challenge.php

@steveplunkett: What advantages does Trackur have over using something like Google Alerts?

Well, we bring all of your keyword monitoring into a dashboard that makes it easy to set-up and manage. We cover more sources than Google Alerts does and we also provide influence measurement tools so you know not just who is writing about your brand, but how likely they are to influence your online reputation.

We also offer some pretty cool tools for marketing and PR agencies that want to provide online reputation monitoring services to their clients.

Google plans to offer broadband service

"Google is getting into the broadband business, taking on the cable and telephone companies in an effort to make speedy Internet access available to more people.

The Internet giant announced on its blog Wednesday that it�planned to deploy a fiber-optic network to at least 50,000 homes and as many as 500,000. The network will deliver faster Internet speed at a competitive price, the company said.�

It will build and test broadband networks in one or�a small number of trial locations across the United States. Communities that want to be considered can apply here."

Google plans to offer broadband service | Technology | Los Angeles Times