This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week: Twitter Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid What are the common twitter mistakes businesses should avoid? How can brands use twitter as a powerful marketing tool? Do Fortune 500 companies use twitter as a business development tool? Is your twitter profile complete? How can brands monitor their twitter account? Read rest of the article to get answers to these questions.

Coming Soon: Google+ Lays the Groundwork for Business Profiles. Survey Report: B2B Researchers Prefer LinkedIn Over Facebook. Social Media Principles: 6 Ways to Become Likeable With Social Media. Friend or Foe?: Social Media Attribution Zuckerberg: The Other One – Talks About Social Media Web Analytics: Challenges in Automated Traffic Reporting. Locals Only: Harnessing The Power Of Online Customer Reviews For Local Business Growth. Google Real-time: What’s Happening On Your Site Right Now? Google Zeitgeist: Larry Page on Search, Google+, Motorola & More. Search Engine War: Blekko Takes on Google – With Help From Russia.

Video of the Week Going to where your customers are [interview] Brian Solis joined Katie Lance from Inman for a discussion about social media, real estate and good old fashioned common sense marketing.

Enhance Your Digital Presence – Sign up for our Digital Marketing Services Do More. Do Better. We’re here! With end-to-end capabilities in digital marketing and a team that is committed to delivering 100% all the time – you can safely rely on the Position² team to take care of your digital marketing support requirements. Position² has processes and systems in place to efficiently deliver high quality assets. Click here to know more!

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This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

• Best Practices: How to Draft a Company Social Media Policy.
• Social Office: Next Version of Microsoft Office to Ship With Facebook IM.
• Invaluable: How Social Media Changed the Way We Got News on the Japan Disaster.
• Caution: Think before you tweet should be the social media golden rule.
• Research: 27% of Small Businesses Using Facebook.

• Search Engine War: Google vs Bing: The SXSWi Smackdown.
• Important Metrics: Top 13 Social Media Ranking Factors for SEO.
• Webmaster Help: Is HTML validation necessary for ranking?
• Hack WSJ Paywall: The Google Loophole Has Become The Facebook/Twitter Loophole.
• In Beta: Google Analytics Unveils A New User Experience.

Video of the Week How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage Learn how the luxury car brand is changing the organization from the inside out to connect with customers through new touchpoints.

Free Webinar: How To Avoid Social Media Marketing Mayhem What Today’s Marketers Must Know March 30 2011 – 10:00 AM PDT Learn how companies are using social media marketing to build relationships with their customers, enhance their brands, and experience positive return on their social media investments. Click here to register!

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YouTube has been the revolution in the Internet for sharing videos covering different topics. There are 24 hours worth of video uploaded every minute on YouTube making it the second largest search engine in the World. It has become vital for business to gain market value over the Internet and YouTube has the right mix with its varied topics.

YouTube has a reputation of being the place to look for funny videos. It is the second place to go after probably ‘Googling’ it. Most videos generate a one-time audience response, as very few people look for the same video again. Since YouTube plays such an important in search results and ranking, it cannot be overlooked. To reach out to your audience and to keep them coming back to view the videos again, here are some rules to be followed :

1. Creation of a channel specific to the videos
2. The video has to be optimized with the desired keywords and involving in the community discussions is vital
3. It is also essential to upload new videos frequently
4. It important to keep in mind while creating the videos that viewer would come back to view the videos only if the videos are informative, original and interesting
5. Share the video across the social networking channels like Facebook and Twitter using the sharing options provided by YouTube using the share option provided. This helps increase visibility and better search engine optimization
6. Embed the videos in the blog. This generates higher views for the blog as well as reaching out to the desired target audience

YouTube has become feature rich with its recent launch of trending topics, to provide more real time value and ease of use for the user in finding information on trending topics. This new addition has made YouTube all the more attractive making it vital for business to get a share of voice in the online market as the volume of search in YouTube is growing at an increasing pace.

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Google caffeine – A recent update in Google’s algorithm will change how search engine results are perceived. The new update has changes in Google’s crawling and indexing mechanism and will bring minor fluctuations in keyword ranks. Google announced that this update will only include changes in its internal algorithm and will not include any user interface changes. This new update will seem more capable of producing real-time results. This happens to be a big step by Google towards providing real time search by improving capacity, speed & accuracy.

According to Google, its Caffeine update will bring certain changes such as,

1) Google’s current infrastructure of manages data by way of Collection > Quality Ranking > Sandbox > Search Results. Google caffeine seems more capable of filtering the content & producing real-time search data.

2) Google Caffeine’s data collection process will differ from the old Google. Currently, Google uses robots to crawl through the web for data. The caffeine will include changes to the robot to get real-time content.

3) Google Caffeine results to be more accurate as it relies more on keyword phrases.

4) Google Caffeine search is designed to be more comprehensive than old Google search.

Currently Caffeine is in its beta stage. This could be accessed at  http://www2.sandbox.google.com by webmasters and other Google users to test and identify the differences in search results between Google Caffeine & the original search engine google.com.

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1. The SEO value of directories

Directories have always been a tested method to acquire inbound links to websites. Google’s index now filters inbound links that ignore links from directories. Though, this is limited to the listing of the inbound link in search results, it has not undermined the SEO value of directories.

Search engines consider every inbound link as a vote cast in favour of the website. The number of inbound links is how the popularity of a website is measured. Of even greater importance is the quality and relevance of the inbound link. If an inbound link is from a website that has a high Google Page Rank, its value will be much greater than a link from a website that has a low Google Page Rank.

It is desirable to secure inbound links from associations and government bodies in your industry. It is also desirable to be linked to related websites in your industry. This puts your website in the right neighbourhood and your website gets associated with the industry.

Directories – both general and niche – are a neutral source of inbound links. It is important to select directories with a high page rank and submit your website to the relevant category. The image below shows the sub-categories under the Internet Marketing section of the Yahoo! Directory.

2. Importance of Titles

The image below shows a typical directory listing in the Yahoo! Directory

The title of a listing is the link pointing to the website. The text present in the title (also called the linking text or anchor text) is the text with which search engines will associate your website. Having your most important keyword present in the Title improves the relevance of your website for that keyword. If your company is an established brand in your industry, you may want your brand name to appear in the Title.

3. Importance of Descriptions

The description is a short sentence about your website that is present below the Title. The proximity of keywords to the linking text plays a major role in SEO. It is important to have the most important keywords present in the description text.

4. Facts and Guidelines about directory submissions

a. Very few people actually refer to directories while searching for something. Their relevance is limited to their SEO value. As such, very few people are likely to see your listing in a directory and you are unlikely to get direct traffic from directories.

b. Neither the Title nor the Description is visible on YOUR website. The Titles and Descriptions are listed in the directory and the Title links back to your website.

c. Different directories have different limits for the length of the Title and Description. It is important to have a few options where the character limits vary before commencing your directory submissions.

d. When you have a presence in many directories with your most important keyword in your Title, there is a good chance that your website will begin to rank high in search results for the keyword.

e. Unlike the content in your website, variations of keywords do not work in the linking text or Title. It is important to have the exact keyword that you wish to rank for, in the Title of the directory listing.

f. Relevant keywords with the highest search volume should be selected for inclusion in the Title and Description.

5. One scenario explained

Contributed by Tushar Prabhu

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In today’s internet-dominated world, search engine marketing has become an essential part of every business. Organizations aspire to attract as much visibility online as possible. Search is by far the most used function on the internet and it is natural that search engine optimization should be indispensible to marketers, to increase visibility online.

Creating a website alone is no longer enough; it needs monitoring and nurturing. It is also important to sustain growth through continuous search engine optimization and result tracking. One of the things that play a role in a site’s performance is its domain name.

The domain name is an important part of the website. It plays a vital role in the discovery and recall of a website. Using the name of a business as the domain name is a common practice. Always, customers identify a website by the business name. Using your company name is the best way to create easy recall of the site. However, you should consider other parameters. In a nutshell, the domain name should be short, catchy, interesting, easy to remember and spell, and as dissimilar to a competitor’s domain name as possible.

Here are some tips on choosing a domain name:

1. Get the top keywords

The first thing to do while deciding the domain name for your website is to pick top keywords that directly relate to your website, its content or your business offering. Once this list is ready, try using the top keywords in the domain name. Using the keywords in the domain name will improve your the chances of the website ranking high in search results for these keywords.

2. Choose the right Top-Level Domain (TLD)

Do not choose a “.com” Top-Level Domain (TLD) just because it is common practice. Choose one that is most relevant to your business. If you are a commercial business, “.com” is the most widely accepted and credible TLD. If your website is a public service or information website, you may want to consider a “.org” domain. If yours is a government operation, consider  “.gov”, and if you are a university, or a deemed university, “.edu” would be the right TLD for you. Your market can also determine your TLD. If your business offering is essentially local, you may consider a country-specific TLD, such as “.us, .uk, .in, etc.”

3. A unique domain name

It is a mistake to use a domain name similar to a popular site. If your target audience confuses your website for some other website, it is will not help your brand. Never choose domains that are simply the plural, hyphenated or misspelled versions of an existing, established domain name.

4. Easy to type and remember

An easy to spell, short and easy to remember name will deliver the best marketing value through easy recall. Simple domain names are easy to recognize and help in building a website’s brand.

5. Keep it short

Short names are easy to type and remember. They also allow for more characters in the URL, so, more of your URL will display in search results. They also fit better on business cards and other offline media.

6. Have a unique identity

Be sure you are not infringing on anyone’s copyright with your site’s name. Visit copyright.gov and search before you buy a domain.

7. Avoid hyphens and numbers

Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to remember or type the domain name. Try not to use spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other.

8. Relate to your brand

Using a unique domain name is a great way to build additional value with your domain name. A “Brand” is much more than just a combination of keywords. A person should easily relate your domain name to the category in which you operate. The brand name should be unique and memorable on the one hand, and should describe the function and core offering of the site on the other.

9. Use an Ajax domain selection tool

Using Ajax domain selection tools such as Domjax makes it easy to check availability of domain names. You can choose an available domain and then register the domain through a registrar.

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