Spo-rat-ic

(adj.): Music, Marketing, Social Commentary and Stuff var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-15664075-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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If the presidential election were held today, who would win the YouTube vote?

As of today, Obama had 53 percent of the total shares (6,904,097) and Romney had 47 percent (6,054,140). When you break this down, Obama had 69 percent of the ads shared on blogs (5,822), 86 percent of the ads shared on Twitter (610,355), and 51 percent of the ads shared on Facebook (6,287,920). By comparison, Romney had 31 percent of the ads shared on blogs (2,557), 14 percent of the ads shared on Twitter (100.025), and 49 percent of the ads shared on Facebook (5,951,558).

Romney’s ads had 57 percent of the comments (141,972) but 38 percent of the views (37,394,432). Obama’s ads had 43 percent of the comments (108,019) but 62 percent of the views (60,924,442).

Source: Unruly Media

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Just another day in the office! Happy Halloween!

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Stop! Its SEO Time - SEO Stop Words

I was having a conversation with one of my SEO cohorts last night about URLs and it got me thinking about "Stop Words." For those not familiar, most search engines do not consider many common terms in order to speed up their results and/or space. One question that you may be asking is why is this important, why should I care? If you use these words in titles, keywords, links, headers, or tags, this can and usually causes the search engines to literally stop. In other words, if your key phrase comes after a stop word, the search engine will never see it and therefore not properly rank your content. Now, this DOES NOT mean that you can't rank for or go after a key phrase with a stop word in it. It just makes it harder for the terms to rank properly. For example, let's say a heating and air company is targeting the phrase "heating and air Pittsburgh." The "and" in this phrase actually causes the term to not rank properly. If one was to look at the analytics of the site you they will see that the search queries are all over the board with different variations of the targeted phrase. This will eventually be remedied by establishing relevancy, time and proper off site strategy but stop words need to be considered when developing a targeted keyword list and especially when you are structuring your URL's, Title and Descriptions. I was familiar with the most common, being "and," "are" & "the" however, there are more. Below is a list comprised of the more common stop words *Note there are many, many more.

Common Stop Words:

a

about

and

are

all

be

because

comes

didn't

here

it's

see

sent

the

then

them

their

try

up

very

Good luck my fellow SEO's. I would like to know other stop words that you come across. Please feel free to comment!

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Can SEO trends predict who will be the next President of the United States? The Data will surprise you......

I want to thank EyeFlow for this great study!

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Google's New Doodle is a tribute to the 107th Anniversary of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. One of the most creative 'doodles' to date.

Note* Make sure you click the tab on the far right of the doodle to experience Slumberland for yourself.

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85% of Consumers Click on the Top of the 1st Page

If you read searchenginewatch.com then you already know. A new study today confirms what we have been telling clients for over a year now. "When it comes to clicks... (the organic listings), 53 percent go to the top result. The second sees 15 percent of the action, the third 9 percent, the fourth 6 percent, dwindling all the way down to 4 percent to round out the top 5" according to the study by compete.com. 

Take a look at the data. Enjoy! 

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Foreign Language PPC Campaigns, How To Run One

English remains the single most widely used language online. But it still only accounts for around a quarter of total usage, and this proportion is falling. The growth in online use of languages such as Chinese and Arabic far outstrips that of English. Additionally, many users only speak English as a second language. A recent study conducted across the European Union found that more than half of Internet users visited foreign language (usually meaning English) websites. However, only 18 percent said they would make online purchases from a site that wasn't in their own native language. The benefits of website localization are increasingly widely recognized. Although SEO should be an important part of any online marketing strategy, it can take time to yield conversions. A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can help speed the process and can also be a cost effective means of advertising and building brand awareness in a foreign market. Of course, it gets more complicated when operating across linguistic divides, and there are a number of issues that should be considered. As a Internet Marketing Manager I completely agree with that statement. If you are an Internet marketer and international marketing is not on your research to do list, then it should be.  Read Full Article at Seach Engine Watch

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Indietronica, finally house music that makes sense to me. I would say that I tend to gravitate to tracks that have pop'y hooks but I am also a suck'a for melodies that can be found in today's independents such as the Tired Ponys and Empires. This track is from Swimwear's February 7th release EP "The Kissing Machine."

Swimwear is the DIY recording alias of Tim Derricourt, co-man of Dappled Cities. Blending home-spun dance production with live instruments and sweet pop hook.

Enjoy!

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Just as we were getting comfortable with the Panda algorithm updates, Google introduced another game changer in Penguin on April 24th and refreshed it on May 25th in order to crack down on sites that use unethical on- and off-page SEO tactics.

As a result, some sites lost a significant amount of their Google organic traffic overnight. The impacted sites I am helping recover all had one thing in common: an unnatural link profile with a majority of their links coming from low quality sites along with overly optimized anchor text.

This article will explain how site owners can diagnose whether they were hit by Penguin themselves and how to detect whether it was off-page factors that caused it.

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Yahoo Partners with Getty Images. So?

Yahoo has announced they’ve reengineered and redesigned multimedia search. In addition to their partnership with Getty Images, which gives Yahoo access to more than 25,000 images uploaded by Getty’s photographers, Yahoo Image Search and Video Search have been given a huge makeover. But really, like it matters. Yahoo, I am sorry but you are donezo.Good try though. The new interface is really nice.

Yahoo has also introduced a Quality Badge, used to identify top quality images and video. Users can choose HQ from the left sidebar on the results page. In order to earn this designation, photos must have be at least 2 megapixels and have a 1024 x 768 aspect ratio. HQ videos are played using adaptive streaming technology that adjusts the quality depending on the user’s device and network capabilities.

Ref. Yahoo.com and Searchenginewatch.com

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What happens in an Internet Minute. This infographic is amazing. 1,300 new mobile users every 60 seconds. Crazy.

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Dolly Parton vs Jay Z. What? Yup. Thanks to turntable.fm, this incredible mashup is now part of my collection. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

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Ad Spend. How is spending in the 1st quarter?

Thanks to Mad Men, Advertising is once again in the spotlight. So how is advertising spending in 2012? Magna Global's estimate for ad spending in the first quarter is print down about 5.6%, radio down 0.3%, outdoor up 5% and TV up 4.5%. For the full year, Interpublic Group's Magna has predicted rises of 6.8% for TV ad spending, including political and Olympics spending, but 2.4% excluding them; 11% for web; 0.8% for radio; and 4% for outdoor. It forecasts declines of 6% for newspapers and 5.9% for magazines.

I think this a fair assessment. I highlighted the web spend here. What do you think? Do you agree with Magna Global? The web is the largest estimated rise in spend for the 2012. I think this is spot on. With all the changes in search and social media (ppc) I think business and agencies alike really see the value in such a targeted medium. At least they are starting warm up to it. About time if you ask me.

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Chicago trio Empires are back. The band's EP Can't Steal Your Heart Away came out Tuesday (March 6) and is only a teaser of what's to come in June when they release their third full-length, Garage Hymns. Hear "Cant Steal Your Heart Away" here. SO GOOD!

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Big 40 of February, Google Makes A Few Changes

OMG what is going on with Google right now... If you are a SEO geek like me I am sure you have noticed some changes in the SERP and rankings. Google announced a list of 40 tweaks to its algorithm, the largest number of improvements in a single month. In the same month, Google confirmed another Panda update, an algorithm tweak that targets low-quality sites. Panda 3.3 update. Similar to the Panda update in mid-January, the latest enhancement to the Panda system has made it more "accurate and sensitive" to recent updates on the web. While the enhancement sounds vague, it further refines Google's effort to reward original, relevant, and useful content on the web. Global release of shopping rich snippets. Dubbed "rich snippets," shopping rich snippets allow users to better locate sites with the most relevant products by providing product prices, availability, ratings, and review counts. Previously only available in the US, Japan, and Germany, February's update has made the feature available to users across the globe. Expand the size of its images index in Universal Search. The latest improvement to Universal Search increases the number of results for which Google shows images in Universal Search. This means users will see more relevant images on a larger amount of searches. For site owners and developers, this increases the importance of SEO for images hosted on a site; Google will be showing them more often in organic search results. Improvements to ranking for local search results. Codename "Venice," this update enhances the execution of Local Universal results by depending more on the ranking of Google's main search results as a signal. More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. Google has enhanced the ranking for predictions in YouTube to offer more locally relevant results. The new change offers more accurate automated search recommendations in YouTube. Fresher images. In February, Google tweaked its signals for producing fresh images. With the new improvement, its algorithm can more often "surface fresh images" when they are found online, which means recently published images show up quicker. Improved detection for SafeSearch in Image Search. Google has enhanced its signal for identifying adult content in Image Search. To ensure that your images are not wrongly flagged as adult content, test your search results with Safe Search mode turned off and on. Less duplication in expanded sitelinks. This change reduces duplication in the snippets for expanded sitelinks. With the latest signal tweak, Google now offers more relevant snippets based more on the page content and less on the search query. Info gathered from Search Engine Watch here

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Giving someone a link is actually a fairly generous gesture. But we don’t always think of it that way.

As the linker, you often link to something simply because it supports your message or because it will add to your content. From that perspective it seems self-serving. You link to someone because it serves your purpose, not theirs.