Reuters

A Tip Sheet for Winning Top Billing on Google News

John Hudson 1:11 PM ET Comment

It’s no secret that a link on Google News will send a fire hose of traffic to your website or blog. But what determines the search giant’s system for ranking the importance of, say, a New York Times article over a Huffington Post article? This is the question that keeps practitioners of the dark arts of S.E.O. up at night. As such, SEO specialists Perfect Market, Local SEO Guide and Newsknife released a new survey on how Google News ranks articles at the Online News Association conference in Boston today. They say these come from specialists at The New York Times Company, The Tribune Company, Time Warner and Conde Nast. The answers aren’t only interesting to publishers but also the masses who rely on the search giant for news. Here are the top 10 factors that count against an article followed by the top 10 factors that help an article, according to the survey.

If your blog posts aren’t getting the traffic you expect you may be missing simple SEO steps that will help the search engines find and rank your posts. We’ve all heard that content is king, but getting that content found and indexed doesn’t happen magically. Try incorporating some of these strategies to improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your posts.

Use an SEO WordPress Plug-Ins

This will appear below your edit post field

If you’re using WordPress.org you have the option to add plug-ins to your blog to increase the functionality. The All In One SEO Pack  is an excellent plug-in for optimization and very user friendly. Once you’ve installed the plug-in you’ll see the above field at the bottom of every post and page. Make use of this plug in to fill in the fields with your title (different from your post title – try to keep this one under 60 characters as that’s what Google will display), your description, which is what Google displays under the search results and your keywords for the page.

This is how these items will show up in search results.

Title and description are displayed here

Even if you’re using WordPress.com and don’t have access to an SEO plug in, there are still plenty of things you can do to optimize your blog posts.

Make Use of Your Post Title for SEO

The post title is what will display in your browser title bar as well as determine the URL of your post. To make sure the search engines can understand the content of your article include one or two of your keywords in your post titles. For example, if you’re writing an article about the weather in Phoenix, Arizona you’ll want to make sure to include “weather, Phoenix, and Arizona” in your title. Seems simple enough!

Use Header Tags for SEO

Search engines read the text surrounded by a header tag before they read normal text. Make use of these formatting options and include keywords in the text formatted with them. Here’s where you format text using header tags:

Optimize Your Images for SEO

Search engines can’t read or interpret images, only text. When adding photos or graphics to your blog posts make sure to fill in the Title and Alternate Text field in the image options section. Not only are you adding valuable text to your images for the search engines but you are also helping those using a screen reader understand the visual elements of your posts. You might start seeing traffic from Google Image Search after you add these tags. Of course, by now it goes without say to include keywords in those alternate text descriptions. Here’s where both versions of WordPress provides these options:

Use Formatted Text for SEO

Even in the normal text section of your posts you can still bold, underline or italicize the keywords that appear naturally in your article. Search engines will place higher importance on this kind of formatted text.

Use Links for SEO

Link to other articles within your own blog. Search engines give higher credibility to these links. If you’re linking to an outside resource make sure to wrap that link with text that the search engine will read as pertinent to the post. Note: using “click here” as a link does not accomplish your goal. The search engine cannot associate “click here” with any relevant content. Instead, use “Click here for more about the weather in Phoenix, Arizona” as your link text. Doing that will keep your users happy and increase the odds that the search engines will rank your post accordingly.

The large majority of external factors that influence organic rankings fall within the classification of link building. There have been great debates in recent months that the ranking impact that can be derived through social media signals falls outside of “traditional” link building. That is valid, and will continue to be debated.

It seems there are few topics within SEO or digital marketing that are as highly contested and controversial as link building. As the SEO Tactics chart was developed, it became obvious that off-site influences would be a core pillar.

This article focuses more on the strategies that surround link building as opposed to the tactics. The space is flooded with these tactics already, yet little attention is paid to the strategies that guide successful link building campaigns.

You are simply burning time and money when a thoughtful link building strategy is absent. Hopefully some of the concepts conveyed in this article will translate well into the programs you’re managing.

Keywords, Anchor Text & the Value of Diversification

You absolutely must have a data-driven keyword strategy in place to drive results from your link building efforts. If you’re not driving revenue or leads then what’s the point?

Identify keywords that have the highest likelihood of driving incremental online conversions, and set those terms as your target. Here’s some good information on identifying the right keywords.

These keywords become the genesis of your anchor text, but don’t fall into the trap that many SEOs do. Here’s a common problem – I want to rank for “men’s jackets” and in doing so I’ve determined that all of the links that I will attain will be targeted with “men’s jackets” as the anchor text. This is a mistake. While you certainly need some focus on the primary keywords within your anchor text it’s equally as important to work with derivatives of that keyword.

Moderation and diversification are important principles in anchor text selection. Do your homework and identify a set of valuable derivates such as “men’s winter jackets” and “cheap men’s jackets.” Diversifying the keywords within your link profile will help it appear natural.

An anchor text usage rule of thumb that we’ve seen success with looks something like this:

• 50 percent containing the exact match keyword.
• 30 percent to 40 percent containing keyword derivatives.
• 10 percent to 20 percent containing brand terms/URL.

Diversification not only relates to the anchor text but to the proportion of “follow” and “nofollow” links within your profile. Many link builders make the mistake of acquiring an abundance of “follow” links to the point where it makes up nearly 100 percent of the profile. Does this look natural? No.

While the direct value of a “nofollow” link will be less than a “follow,” the indirect value of diversifying your overall link profile will make it well worth the time.

Aiming at the Right Target – Destination URL Selection

The link building components of an SEO campaign shouldn’t occur in a vacuum. They should be complimenting a larger and more holistic approach to SEO. When determining the URL that you will be pointing to your anchor text, you should follow the same methodology that your internal linking structure follows.

This consistency is important and will help signal the engines as to which specific URL should rank for a given term. Mapping your keywords to specific URLs from the start is a worthwhile exercise and can be used as a guide for both internal and off-site linking. Here’s some good information related to keyword mapping and on-site optimization elements that should be considered as part of your holistic plan.

Avoid pointing links to the home page when link building to non-brand terms. Diversification again comes into play here and you want URLs that have the best chance of converting to be the page that ranks for a given term.

Strive for a healthy mix of links coming in at you category pages, sub-category pages, and product-level pages. If you are link building with the anchor text “men’s jackets” this should be pointing into your category level page that is optimized for “men’s jackets” with an internal linking structure that is supporting the URL for that keyword.

Sub-category-targeted link building can be quite successful within ecommerce sites. Utilizing a sub-category-specific derivative such as “men’s winter jackets” that is pointed to its mapped sub category URL can be beneficial for both that term and the head term that it is a derivative of. This is where the power of proper internal linking can benefit your link building efforts as weight can be transferred both upstream to the category page and downstream to product-level pages via site navigation, breadcrumbs, etc.

Penalized vs. Devalued – Panda Paranoia

It’s hard to have a discussion on link building without talking about Google’s Panda update. Plenty of ecommerce webmasters are afraid that Google is or will penalize their site because they have links coming in from what they believe is a low quality content site that has been penalized.

Unless you’re creating massive amounts of low quality content on your own site, the chances of you receiving stiff penalties from Google because of a few inbound links is quite low (although a small degree of paranoia is a good thing when it comes to SEO). However, it’s quite likely those inbound links will be devalued. This is a much different scenario than your site being penalized though – so keep things in perspective.

A Couple of Parting Thoughts

Take the time to do this right. Don’t rush into link building without a clear strategy, and don’t think that it’s purely a numbers game.

Relevance and quality really do matter and will set you up for a sustainable link building campaign. Whether you’re acquiring links through blogging, video distribution, infographics, whitepapers, press releases, webinars or distributing articles, always keep your focus on the end user and the value that your content offers them.

Kevin “Dark Dante” Poulsen

Poulsen holds claim to one of the more amusing hacks of all time. A radio contest held by KIIS-FM promised a shiny new Porsche 944 S2 to the 102nd person to call into the station. Rather than try his luck among the multitude of Los Angeles listeners, Poulsen took over all of the telephone lines to the station to ensure he’d be the 102nd caller. He eventually had to disappear once he became a fugitive of the FBI. This landed him a spot on the popular TV show Unsolved Mysteries. The show’s hotlines crashed when the episode aired. Coincidence? In 1991, Poulsen was arrested and eventually pled guilty to various counts of computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Interestingly, since his incarceration, Poulsen made a complete 180, helping in cyber crime cases, and even capturing sexual predators on MySpace.

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick is perhaps the most famous hacker in computer history, likely due to his being the first hacker to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list. As a master of social engineering, Mitnick didn’t just hack computers; he hacked the human mind. In 1979, at the age of 16, he hacked his way into his first computer system and copied proprietary software. He would often engage with admin personnel, such as in phone calls and e-mail messages, and trick them into giving up passwords and other security information. After a two and a half year pursuit, Mitnick was finally arrested and served five years in prison. He now runs his own computer security consultancy, Mitnick Security Consulting LLC.

Tsutomu Shimomura

Not all hackers fall under the Black-Hat umbrella. Tsutomu Shimomura is a White-Hat hacker credited with capturing Kevin Mitnick. In 1994, Mitnick stole some of Shimomura’s personal files and distributed them online. Motivated by revenge, Shimomura came up with a trace-dialing technique to back-hack his way in to locating Mitnick. With Shimomura’s information, the FBI was able to pinpoint and arrest Mitnick.

Richard Stallman

In his early years, Stallman was a graduate student and programmer at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Labs where he would constantly engage with MIT’s rich hacking culture. As an advocate for just about everything Open Source, Stallman fought back when MIT installed a password system in its Computer Science department. He would decrypt users’ passwords (not an easy task given the processing power of the 1970’s) and send them a message with their password in plaintext, suggesting they leave the password blank in order to re-enable anonymous use. Going into the 1980’s, Stallman didn’t like the proprietary stance many manufacturers were taking on their software. This eventually led Stallman to create the GNU General Public License and GNU operating system, a completely free Unix-like OS that is completely Unix-compatible.

Linus Torvalds

Following Stallman’s lead, Linus Torvalds is another White-Hat hacker. His hacking days began with an old Commodore VIC-20 and eventually a Sinclair QL, both of which he modified considerably. On the QL in particular, he programmed his own Text Editor and even a Pac-Man clone he dubbed Cool Man. In 1991, he got an Intel 80386 powered PC and began creating Linux, first under its own limited license but eventually merged it into the GNU Project under the GNU GPL. Torvalds hadn’t originally intended on continued support for his Linux Kernel, but due to the nature of the Open Source project, it grew into one of the most hacker friendly (and secure) operating systems available.

Part 2, sorry everyone. If you are interested in more reading check out Kevin Mitnick’s Social Engineering books, they are a great read. Also, try The Cuckoo’s Egg, another great book. What are your favorite hacking books?

The computer world has a rich history of hackers who steered the progress of computer science and gave shape to computers, the internet, and networking as we see it today – in some cases single-handedly. While the term “Hacker” today carries a negative connotation of an ill-intentioned computer genius, that’s only a small portion of what the word really means. Yes, there are the Black Hat hackers behind internet mayhem, thievery, and chaos, but there are also White Hat hackers who use their computer savvy for good. There’s also a different kind of hacker entirely: the tinkerer. They all played parts, big and small, in creating the computer world as it exists today. We’ve put together a list of 10 great hackers who all played a part in this history.

Konrad Zuse

It all begins with Konrad Zuse, arguably the very first computer hacker. He may not have been a hacker in the modern sense of the word, but none of it would have been possible without him. You see, Zuse made the world’s very first fully programmable (Turing-complete as they say) computer, known as the Z3. It began, of course, as the Z1, and while it wasn’t built in a cave with a box of scraps, Zuse did build it himself in his parents’ apartment, completing it in 1938. Zuse eventually gained some backing by the German government, leading to the evolution from the Z1 to the Z3, which, complete in 1941, is considered the mother of modern computing.

John “Captain Crunch” Draper

John Draper was hacking computers long before computers were even common place. Draper’s hacking heyday was back in the early 1970’s, when the largest computer network to which the general public had any access was the telephone system. At the time, telephones were managed by an automated system using specific analogue frequencies which could be exploited to make free long distance or even international calls. It was called “Phreaking,” and one of the most well-known Phreaking tools was a toy whistle that came in a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal. With this whistle, Draper created another popular Phreaking tool known as the Blue Box, a device that could produce many other tones used by the phone companies.

Steve Wozniak

A contemporary to John Draper, Wozniak was no stranger to Phreaking. In fact, after Draper shared the details of his Blue Box design during a Homebrew Computer Club meeting, Wozniak built a version of his own. Steve Jobs saw the marketing potential in the device, and the two Steves began their first joint venture together. Wozniak’s hacking days weren’t all spent on projects of questionable legality, though. With the proceeds from their blue boxes as well as selling Wozniak’s cherished HP calculator and Jobs’ VW van, Wozniak created the Apple I. With the other Steve’s marketing prowess, their company became the industry leader it is today.

Robert Tappan Morris

As a graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Morris created his claim to fame: the computer worm. According to Morris, he created the worm as an attempt to gauge the size of the internet at the time. After its release on Nevember 2nd, 1988, the Morris Worm went on to infect approximately 6,000 systems (about 10 percent of the internet attached computers at the time). The worm was intended to be unobtrusive, but due to a flaw in its replication algorithm, it copied itself excessively, causing heaving system loads and ultimately leading back to Morris. In 1989, Morris became the first person indicted and later convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

Mark “Phiber Optik” Abene

Here’s a name you may not be familiar with: Mark Abene. He never hacked into the D.O.D. nor did he steal millions of dollars in some Swordfish-style bank heist. What he did do was piss off AT&T. As a member of the hacker group Masters of Destruction, Abene was often poking around on AT&T’s systems. When AT&T’s telephone system crashed, leaving 60,000 customers without phone service for over 9 hours, they quickly blamed Abene. The Secret Service paid him a rather aggressive visit, confiscating his equipment, and while AT&T eventually admitted that the crash was a mistake on its part, Abene was charged with computer tampering and computer trespassing in the first degree. Later, he would face more charges and ultimately serve a year in federal prison, making him the first hacker to do so.

Part of our history, computers wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for some of these individuals. It makes you wonder how many hackers are out there that havn’t been caught or bragged about their feats. Also, what types of hacks are they doing. Everything from starting your car with your Iphone to controlling the heat, electrical in your home technology today is everywhere. If you could hack all of these areas is anyone safe?

Keeping up to date with what search engine algorithms are looking for from your content is vital in ensuring that your SEO strategy is working to its full potential.

According to an article published by Search Engine Watch, there are a number of metrics out there that can be used to test algorithms to keep your SEO strategies fresh.

Here is just a summarised selection of the suggestions provided by SEW’s article:

Defining Metrics:

Here are some of the metrics you could possibly use and how useful they actually are –

• Ranking – This is a metric that according to SEW ‘combines too many factors,’ thus making it very difficult to pinpoint any effect on an individual factor effecting your whole SEO activity.
• PageRank – A very rough metric that is slow to update, however don’t discount it – it can provide you with an outline of ‘how PR is distributed through your website.’
• Penalties – Penalties will only show when you have one to far. They can also display evidence of ‘manual intervention.’ Overall the triggers for manual checks are difficult to ‘reverse engineer,’ SEW states.
• Information provided by Google Webmaster Tools – A great hub for providing information on error handling and backlink reporting and much more, this information can provide a significant insight into the factors taken into account in Google rankings. The amount of information provided depends on Google though, which can mean that not enough is provided.

Location sharing over smartphones still faces challenges, whether it’s privacy concerns, the limitations of check-in services or more practical worries about battery life draining from services that constantly broadcast your location. But Echoecho, a Los Angeles–based startup, thinks it’s got the issue solved with a simple service that lets people request location updates from friends in their phone address book, who then can decide whether to respond with their coordinates. The company announced on Thursday that it has raised $750,000 in seed funding from Google Ventures and United Kingdom–based PROFounders Capital.

The new funding will help the company scale up its back end, add more features and build the team beyond its current four members. And the backing from Google will likely help raise the profile of the startup. The investment from Google makes sense in some ways because Echoecho is about searching for people in real time.

“Echoecho is in a growing space where consumers are using their mobile devices for everything social in their daily lives,” said Wesley Chan, a partner at Google Ventures. “We’re excited to be working with Echoecho as they have created a simple yet elegant solution to help people find each other quickly.”

The app works by allowing people to find friends in their address book and send them a quick but familiar message: “Where are you?” Users who have the app get a push notification, and they can decide to update their location and make both parties visible on a map. If a recipient doesn’t have the Echoecho app, she gets a text message providing an invitation to download the app and a way to respond via the mobile web app.

Nick Bicanic, the CEO and co-founder, said check-in services aren’t great at providing current location data. Services like Loopt and Google Latitude can broadcast a user’s location constantly, but that can eat into battery life and can also prompt privacy concerns. By pulling location rather than pushing it out, Echoecho lets people control when and how they make that information available to others. And since it can be used without both parties owning the app or joining a social network, it’s a simple way to provide location updates.

“Echoecho exists to the solve the ‘where are you?’ problem,” Bicanic said. “Our big competition isn’t check-in services, it’s phone calls and SMS. If we can’t do this better than texting and phone calls, we should pack up and leave.”

The latest version of Echoecho, which features a design overhaul, is now out on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Symbian, with Windows Phone 7 coming shortly. It introduces new features, including the ability to find places to meet with a friend and a chatting service to carry on a conversation. That puts it potentially in competition with some group messaging apps like GroupMe and Beluga that also include location sharing.

Echoecho, which got going last year and had a more formal launch in February, might end up just being a feature in larger apps, or it could get woven into mobile operating systems. Bicanic said he’s had early stage conversations in the past month with mobile operating system owners and handset manufacturers about building in Echoecho functionality. Google could be an obvious company to acquire Echoecho at some point for Android or Latitude.

But Bicanic said the app can also stand on its own and make money. He said businesses like banks could use Echoecho’s technology to help verify a user’s location for fraud and security purposes. He said there’s an opportunity in lead generation by giving advertisers a way to surface their stores or locations when people are looking for a place to meet. But with the latest funding, said Bicanic, he doesn’t have to stress about the revenue side as much right now.

I think Echoecho makes sense. As I wrote recently, check-in services are slow in catching on with users, according to the latest Pew survey. And many people — 59 percent of women and 52 percent of men, according to Nielsen — still harbor a lot of concerns about privacy when it comes to location sharing. Making location sharing simple and safe solves a lot of issues and puts more control back in the hands of users. This kind of approach may help location services become more trusted utilities for users.

The micro-blogging site Twitter has said active users have passed the 100 million mark, but it has no plans to become a public company.

The company’s chief executive told a news conference it was preparing to increase its business range by broadening the areas of its service where adverts appear.

But Dick Costolo also said he wanted the business to remain independent.

He said active users, who log on at least once a month, rose 82% this year.

Half of these 100 million log on at least once a day.

Twitter raised $400m (£250m) in venture capital funding this summer.

Mr Costolo said: “We want to be able to remain independent, grow the business the way we want to, and not be beholden to public markets until we feel like we want to be.”

The company began showing adverts in limited areas of its service in 2010.

But it is concerned that commercialisation sometimes alienates users of social media.

More adverts

Mr Costolo said the results had exceeded Twitter’s expectations: “We now feel that based on the engagement rates we’re seeing… that we’re ready to expand this further.”

Twitter plans to allow adverts on its service known as promoted tweets.

Previously, promoted tweets, such as a message promoting a coffee chain, would only appear if the user already followed that particular company.

Mr Costolo said the business could work relying solely on advertising income: “It’s our firm belief that our advertising platform is the only revenue component that we need to have in the market in order to be a huge independent business.”

Twitter allows people to send 140-character messages, or Tweets, to anyone who signs up to receive them.

It has 200 million registered users, while Facebook has 750 million.

Amazing the amount of users on Twitter, way to go. Interesting to see how long they will stay independent.