After several months in the planning, Microsoft has finally taken the covers off its new web search engine, Bing. Set to go live in under a week, Bing is not just a re branding of Microsoft’s previous search site Live Search but is a major update introducing new features and a new interface, touted as a “decision engine“.

Having been in internal testing for a while under the codename of Kumo, Bing was unveiled today – as expected – at the All Things Digital D7 conference by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Bing is expected to start rolling out in the coming days with worldwide availability expected by June 3.
According to Microsoft, Bing will initially have four main search verticals: shopping around for products (with reviews and price comparisons to help you make your decision), travel planning (using technology from their acquisition of Farecast), researching health conditions (possibly linked to Microsoft HealthVault), and local business search (with integrated reviews and maps).

You may be wondering where such a strange name came from. Yusuf Mehdi, the Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business Group who demoed Bing on stage at D7 today, reveals “We needed a brand that was as fresh and new – A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world – the name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.”

Along with the relaunch, the Virtual Earth mapping platform will now be known as Bing Maps for Enterprise, the advanced travel search features made available from Microsoft’s acquisition of Farecast will be fully integrated as Bing Travel, and the Live Search cashback program will also be branded to Bing Cashback.

Will Bing be able to save Microsoft’s ever-dwindling search share? The product will have to seriously impress consumers and become an excellent brand if it is going to reach anywhere near Google’s search market and many believe that Bing could be aimed more at finally removing Yahoo! search from the competition. An advertising campaign for Bing, costing Microsoft up to $100 million, is expected soon as they try – yet again – to make larger inroads into the world of internet search.

Your Gmail is about to undergo an extreme makeover- social networking style. Recent Google announced the release of Google Wave. Essentially, it’s kind of like Google’s version of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail on steroids but with real-time capabilities.

The basic idea is that you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content – it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

Google’s multi-layered media format in the user interface provides users wit the tools for media collabration  and full editing controls to each participant.

Wave’s Primary features include:

• Google Wave Concurrency: Natural language tools extending control technology provides real-time collaboration on a wave edit rich media at the same time.
• Server-based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction.
• Google Wave APIs:Embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets.

Fans of Google’s other services and tools such as Analytics, Google Earth, Google Reader and Google News should welcome the Wave with open arms.No official launch date has been released, but you can sign up for the wave at wave.google.com.

Described by Google as “a new model for communication and collaboration on the web,” many industry pundits and technology Bloggers says it’s more like creating a bunch of independent online social networks that are based on a marriage of email and instant messaging. Each “page” or online social networking area is called a “wave.” Within it you can have conversations and share documents in real time. It’s not just about text either. The platform allows people to communicate and collaborate with any form of “rich media” (this includes text, photos, videos, maps and more). Any participant can reply and connect anywhere in the message as well as being able to edit the content and add participants. The waves also include a “playback” feature that allows people who may have joined later in the wave to “rewind” all of the content.

Is Google Wave the next generation of the live web?

While the platform is still in development (it’s looking like it will be publicly available later in the year), one of the major features and functionality that Google is promoting is how “live” the platform is. This includes a live transmission as you type (I seem to recall ICQ instant messaging having this feature as well) which will enable people to have faster conversations, see edits as they are happening and interact in real-time.

The platform is also pushing the ability to drag and drop items and make the Web a much more friendlier/easier place for everyone to connect, share, build and grow.

Is Google Wave good for Marketers?

It is way too early to tell, but there are some indications that if a platform like Google Wave does take off, it will fragment the concept of an online social network and splinter it down to a place where these areas are not used by masses to congregate and boast how many friends or connections they have, but perhaps the metric becomes how many waves individuals are engaged with and how active the conversation and collaboration is.

The platform obviously creates much more targeted inventory for advertising with the Google AdWords model (much like it does over at Gmail), but depending on how open or private these waves will be, this could also be one of those moments in time where people shift from having their opinions out in public, back into smaller, cozier and more personal conversations in a Google Wave.

Imagine brands inviting their consumers into a Google Wave – be it for customer service, product development or simply to discuss brand evangelism. This could become the highly personalized online social network many of us have been waiting for.

In the meantime, you can watch the hour-plus-long video of the unveiling of Google Wave right here:

Just the other day I was using my email and I found myself scoffing with disgust. “This is so last century!”

Okay, not really. But apparently down at Google Australia, that’s exactly what they’ve been thinking lately-and Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon came up with a way to revolutionize email and instant messaging called Google Wave. As Lars says, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

After a long demo, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler was inclined to agree with the seeming overstatement. Just reading about this new product is making my head spin. The integration of social and email here goes WAY beyond having a pane for GTalk in your Gmail.

The first two columns look pretty familiar if you’re used to the standard Gmail set up: the left-hand navigation has your folders and mailbox features as well as your GTalk contacts. The middle column has the inbox-but the difference here is that these aren’t individual messages, like you’d see in most mail clients, or even threaded “conversations” like you see in Gmail-these are the Waves that give the product its name.

How are Waves different from standard email? Well, for one thing you can communicate in not only “delay time,” like we do with email, but also real time (if you’re both online). And not just like IM, but see-as-you-type real time (though you can enable a “draft” feature if you want your friends to wait and see). Unlike email and even Gmail, you can click anywhere to start typing a reply to your friend’s messages-or other content, since you can include pictures, event invitations, games, maps, Wiki-style content and more.

Waves can also feature more than two people-just drag a friend’s photo from your contacts and drop it in the Wave to add them. They can sue the Playback feature to catch up on what you’ve been discussion.

Your head spinning yet? ‘Cause we’re just getting started.

Waves can remain private in your inbox or be published on the web, fully indexable by search engines. (They say that public waves are clearly marked as such in your inbox and in the wave itself.)

But that’s just the beginning of Wave’s portability. In the second phase of development, Waves will also integrate with other websites as a platform-for example, you could include a post from your blog in a Wave to discuss with friends, and have their comments in the Wave integrate with the comments on your blog (though all the details haven’t been hammered out on that one). Other commenters can also join in the wave.

And it’s not just blogs: the Google Wave team also sees lots of other kinds of sites using Wave for everything from customer service interface to contributor group chats.

And as if all that weren’t enough, Google’s also working hard with developers to make sure that the system is fully featured and ready for the masses. They have 50 internal Google developers who’ve created apps for Wave.

The APIs for Wave open tomorrow (tomorrow), but eventually the whole system is going open source as a protocol for its third phase. Waveprotocol.org has more details on that phase.

Which I know is making you wonder just when this is going to roll out. Google showed the launch at Google I/O, and though APIs are going to be available tomorrow, Wave itself is just a little ahead of its time. Google says its engineers are looking forward to HTML 5, which will enable Wave to operate within the browser without any necessary plugins (well, the “modern” browser, they say to exclude Internet Explorer).

And THAT is all. For now. You can sign up to be notified of the public launch at http://wave.google.com/.

So, if you’ve made it this far, what do you think? Are you salivating for the latest evolution of Internet communication, or are you shaking your fist at your monitor shouting “you crazy kids and your new fangled contraptions!”?

If you’re a frequent Twitter user, we’ve all had the problem of space limitations due to long Urls since the length of the text message is 140 characters. If you don’t know about it yet, then there is a solution available!

TinyUrl.com

Ever heard of TinyURL.com? Well, basically, it’s a redirection service that gives you a short Url for your given your destination Url, which you can use in your web pages or emails. It has served many different purposes for years.

Typical reasons for its use to to shorten the Urls that are not only long enough to accommodate in limited spaces, it’s unlikely that users would be able to reproduce the long urls exactly by typing it without errors.

For example,

In Twitter, small Urls are preferred due to space limations

In emails blasts where long urls often get malformed and become non-functional. Tinyurls serve a good replacement for long urls.

For (casual) anonymity to users, such as for hiding affiliate links etc Tinyurls are mostly used.

TinyURL.com does not require you to create an account before starting with creating short urls. Just fill up the form with the long url and press the ‘Make TinyURL!’ button and instantly you get a short url that you can use in place of your given url. TinyURL now also allow an optional alias for your url which you can use to point to your page, given that the alias is not already taken.

So, the short link to an inventory page on one of our dealers (http://www.reedmantoll.com/new-inventory/vehicle-details.htm?vehicleId=75a132e44046381e01cc7e90761a4815&useHistory=true) is as small as http://tinyurl.com/422nlt!

That was all about TinyURL that most of you might have already known. Many developers wished if they could find a way to create TinyURLs without manually typing them, from within their online applications is actually quite easy to do in VB.NET.

It turns out that there is an API available and to make a request it’s as simple  as calling a page as below.

http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=<your url here>

The output you get contains just one line containing the TinyURL corresponding to the url that you passed. I have already started using this API and am sure you are not far behind!

Here is an example using VB.NET:

   Private Function generateTinyUrl(ByVal url As String)
        Dim tinyUrlQuery As String = "http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=" + url
        Dim tinyUrl As String = LTrim(RTrim(GetHTMLPage(tinyUrlQuery)))

        Return tinyUrl
    End Function

    Public Function GetHTMLPage(ByVal URL As String, _
      Optional ByVal TimeoutSeconds As Integer = 5, _
      Optional ByVal proxy As Integer = -1) _
      As String
        ' Retrieves the HTML from the specified URL,
        ' using a default timeout of 10 seconds
        Dim objRequest As Net.WebRequest
        Dim objResponse As Net.WebResponse
        Dim objStreamReceive As System.IO.Stream
        Dim objEncoding As System.Text.Encoding
        Dim objStreamRead As System.IO.StreamReader

        Try
            ' Setup our Web request
            objRequest = Net.WebRequest.Create(URL)
            objRequest.Timeout = TimeoutSeconds * 1000

            ' Retrieve data from request
            objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse
            objStreamReceive = objResponse.GetResponseStream
            objEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding( _
                "utf-8")
            objStreamRead = New System.IO.StreamReader( _
                objStreamReceive, objEncoding)
            ' Set function return value
            GetHTMLPage = objStreamRead.ReadToEnd()
            ' Check if available, then close response
            If Not objResponse Is Nothing Then
                objResponse.Close()
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            ' Error occured grabbing data, simply return nothing
            ' MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString)
            Return "Exception"
        End Try
End Function

Introduction

In recent months, the automotive industry has quickly established a sizable presence on Twitter, the Web’s most popular micro-blogging service. A high-level review of its presence, however, reveals that – like many industries – it’s making the leap to the still newish communication venue with varying degrees of success. While some participants have taken to the medium swimmingly, it’s surprising how many treat Twitter almost solely as an opportunity for naked self-promotion, seldom or never engaging directly with their customers, providing customer support or other useful information.

Engage with your audience

Twitter offers such profound reach for very low overhead, it’s a shame to see some companies using it with so little actual engagement. As you’d hope, Ford Customer Service does a great job of engaging with customers on Twitter. A recent review of FordCustService activity on Twitter indicates that the marketing specialist managing the account is responding directly to customer inquiries and researching answers for those customers where necessary. So, too, Honda is regularly engaging with U.S. customers via the Alicia_at_Honda account created by a corporate communications staffer.
And, quite smartly, Toyota USA is interacting with its customer base, via the toyotanewsroom account, rather than simply posting press releases. That’s an example the folks running the BMWConceptX1 account could benefit from examining. They’ve posted eight updates since Sept. 30th, 2008 and all have them have been simple links to promotional content – photos on Flickr, a new Facebook page, a microsite, a trailer. Not exactly a visionary use of the medium.

Provide helpful contributions

Twitter shouldn’t be all about explicitly pushing your product. You build more good will by providing helpful contributions – which, of course, contribute to building and presenting your brand in the best possible light, as well.  How specifically do you engage your audience then, if spraying them with press releases and video clips isn’t enough? Well, in addition to responding to consumer inquiries, consider linking to information, which may still relate to your product and brand, but would also still be relevant to your audience member’s specific interests and needs. For example, Alicia_at_Honda recently linked to a Chicago Tribune article about the best cars for dogs, which listed just one Honda among several other makes in various classifications. 

Similarly, GMblogs recently linked to a Kelly Blue Book piece, which listed the 2009 Pontiac G8 as just one of  5 Great Car Deals. This sort of linking still bolsters your brand by communicating a sense of authenticity and transparency about your product and company and where they fit in the scheme of things.

Monitor your brand

Any company not monitoring mentions of its brand on Twitter is missing an extraordinary opportunity to be a fly on the wall, observing perhaps the most open and authentic discussion of their company and products imaginable.  You have the opportunity, not only to passively observe, but also to actively intervene where your brand is being misrepresented or maligned.  Sometimes, of course, your product simply fails and how you speak to that in a public arena can have an immediate impact upon your brand.
Witness the deafening silence that follows Anthony Quintano’s tweet last month that a Hackensack, N.J. Toyota dealership left the plug out of his oilpan, causing his “car to seize while in motion.” Scary stuff. He later claims the dealership’s work almost “killed me twice” and links to a lengthy blog post on the incident.  Despite addressing the Toyota Newsroom directly on Feb. 26, the results of a Twitter search indicate that at the time of this posting a response had not been addressed to Quintano’s account, quintanomedia. What a wasted opportunity. Quintano was waging a self-declared war against a Toyota dealership and no one reached out. While Quintano was asking fellow Twitterers to Digg his blog entry, little was being done to maintain –- and in this case certainly repair –- Toyota’s brand.

Not only is it important to respond to brand- or dealership-specific complaints, you need to be mindful that managing a Twitter account can be a 24/7 responsibility. One evening earlier this month Angela Teeple tweeted Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, to say “my ‘08 Escape w/ 40K mi, AC compression unit broke, directly affects powertrain but not covered under warranty. Buying Toyota.” Within an hour, Monty replied to Teeple, suggesting she notify FordCustService. It appears Teeple may have been on the phone with Ford the previous day, so perhaps Monty’s prompt response to her situation may not have been too terribly undermined by FordCustService’s ironically tardy response. Nonetheless, Monty appears to have done his best to both meet a customer’s immediate need, while also attending to mentions of the Ford brand on the web.

It’s not hard to find angry customers venting their feelings on Twitter. Sometimes the appropriate response may be to ignore the angry and irrational. However, you should be sure you’re not actually missing an opportunity to burnish your brand and help a customer in need.

Don’t overshadow your brand

Accounts transparently maintained by individuals tend to tweet more often and more effectively. One drawback, however: heavy participation by such individuals on behalf of their companies can sometimes be perceived this as self promotion -– perhaps the wrong sort of auto-promotion for a car company.
The aforementioned Scott Monty, for example, has recently received more attention than he’d probably have preferred. Ray Wert, Editor-in-Chief of Jalponik, claims that Monty draws more attention to himself than his employer. Arguably, Monty is simply trying to do Ford a favor by forging a well-rounded presence on Twitter in contrast to many of the anemic, infrequently utilized profiles of his competitors. Referring to the incident in Ad Age, Critical Mass’s David Armano saddled Monty with the unfortunate moniker of “brandividual” for the name he has built himself online. Armano also complimented him, however, for “leveraging his personal network to help jumpstart Ford’s initiatives.”  As I’m sure Monty could attest, it can be a delicate balance.

Introduction

Recently, we have observed that having as much relevant multimedia as possible on pages on our sites improves their rankings.

As an example, a year or so ago constructing a page with only text content related to, say, some phrase P with sufficient backlinks might be sufficient to rank #1 for optimized keyword searches, however, our analysis shows that this trend is rapidly changing.

Improved rankings for pages makes with a high amount of multimedia content sense intuitively if you understand the Google PageRank algorithm. Google wants to serve pages to users that are the most relevant for a given surfer’s query (which we will denote by Q). Thus, the more content the page has – be it  text, images, video, audio, whatever., then the more (possibly) relevant that page will be for some arbitrary Q.

In the following, we performed statistical analysis of 208 SEO pages that had multimedia content on them (i.e., text, images, and YouTube videos) on them vs. those that only had only text and image content. We assume that the number of  visitors to pages are proportional to the rank of the page for relevant queries.

The following gives summarization statistics of sample data of these pages:

Conclusion

This study suggests that having as much multimedia content on pages on your website increases traffic to your site from the search engines, which implies pages that have more relevant multimedia content, in general, get more traffic and rank higher than pages that do not.

Does Twitter have SEO Value?

Since Twitter started gaining popularity the question about its “SEO value” has been on the minds of many webmasters who obviously want to boost their placement into Google’s SERPs. But using Twitter for “link juice” is a lost battle in Google’s ranking methodology.

Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links submitted by its users. The “nofollow” attribute advises Google, and a few other search engines, to ignore the link. Some of these follow the links but exclude them from their ranking calculations (Yahoo!, Google); some ignore the links completely (MSN). The only known search engine that doesn’t comply with Google’s “nofollow” at all is Ask.com. This example alone shows that Google’s algorithms are not the gospel for all search engines.

Do Shortened URLs Have SEO Value?

The short answer is yes. TinyURLs are dynamically created URLs that redirect users to the real URL via 301 (permanent redirect). Search engines do not index TinyURLs, but index and pass PageRank to the actual URLs instead. The problem with Twitter, as we already discussed, is the “nofollow” attribute added to all submitted links.

Are There Any Other Possible SEO Advantages with Twitter?

SEO is not only about building links. Optimizing a site is about creating and promoting content that can be regarded as a resource. “Creating” is “onsite SEO.” “Promoting” is “offsite SEO.”

Every time you submit your site to a directory you “promote it” – meaning that you do “offsite SEO.” Every time a link to your site is published somewhere on the web a gate to your site is being opened. People don’t care about “nofollow” attributes. If they see a link and they think the content it leads to is interesting, they follow.

When visitors land on a page from an exterior link some other metrics are affected: number of unique visitors, number of page views, and time on site. These metrics matter for the search engines more and more; since all other variables are so easily gamed (links and keywords are all subject to spam and black hat SEO strategies).

To make a long story short: although Twitter is a social media tool meant to create community and relationships, it does have an SEO value. For example, Twitter can affect positively your Alexa rankings by sending visitors to your pages.

Here are some tips to Optimize for the twitter search:

1. The Importance of Keyword Research

As long as search engine optimization exists, keyword research will always be important. In optimizing anything for search online, understanding the language of your potential customers and audience is crucial. It will help you not only to improve your search traffic but also to tweak your marketing message and better relate to the people you are selling to.

That being said, tweeps (people on Twitter) are no different than searchers on Google. They use the language that they’re used to, both in their Twitter conversations and in search queries.

The great thing about Twitter is that you can easily use it as a market research tool to better understand the people you’re targeting. Use the wealth of knowledge existing on the site to look into popular keywords and market needs.

2. Twitter Profile Branding and Branding Yourself

Branding is extremely important, in SEO and in social media. If you’re using Twitter as a business tool to reach out to more potential customers and increase your traffic, then you absolutely need to have a strong brand presence. Rather than using the same Twitter account to target various audiences, set up multiple identities and use them to cater to specific audiences. Brand yourself and stand for something. Twitter search will eventually give more weight in the search results to Twitter users who talk mainly about the specific niche being searched for.

Being focused will also help you to stay consistent with your marketing message and get the attention of your target audience. This in turn will increase the chances of people following you and paying more attention to what you have to offer (more on this in the next section) – which means you get better rankings in Twitter search.

It also helps to customize your Twitter profile to be consistent with your brand image. Use a catchy background with all of your contact information and write a descriptive bio that includes your name, location, and website. For examples, check out the list top Twitter users.

3. Get more Followers and Build Relationships

Google uses factors such as domain age and the quantity and quality of inbound links to determine the authority of a site. In the same way, Twitter will probably do something similar and give more trust to users who have been using the service longer and have more followers. Tweets of trusted users will likely receive a boost in the Twitter search results.

So what does that mean for you, a Twitter SEO? You need to build relationships with other people in your industry and build your Twitter audience by collecting more followers. Make connections with other people, online and off, through whatever channels you have access to (e.g. other social media sites, blogs, conferences, etc). SEO is quickly becoming more and more social and it’s not necessarily what you know anymore – it’s who you know. The people who are most-connected will rise to the top and get the majority of the attention.

If you want to build your Twitter audience fast you can start some sort of contest or promotion. Just be aware that whenever you run these types of campaigns your followers won’t be very engaged with you because of you. A lot of them want the benefits and prizes but don’t care about you or what you have to say, at least in the beginning. The best way to do it is organically through real connections but promotions do give a good jolt to your numbers.

4. Be Engaging by Adding to the Conversation

As you may know, Twitter is a giant online conversation where millions of users exchange ideas and information. Since Twitter search pulls information from this enormous pool, it’s important that you add relevant content and links where appropriate using the keyword research insights you learned in step one. Sure, you only get 140 characters of space but that doesn’t mean you can’t pack a punch and gain attention. Spark up debate and conversation in your niche, answer questions, and add relevant content and advice whenever possible. Be an expert and an authority and engage with anyone and everyone. It will pay off.

5. Start viral marketing campaigns

Whereas inbound links represent “votes” for a page in Google Search, Twitter is likely to incorporate re-tweets (another Twitter user broadcasting your message to their own audience) into their algorithm to better understand the popularity of content. As a Twitter SEO, this means that you need to maximize the number of re-tweets of your content. Viral marketing becomes extremely important and in order to do well in Twitter search you need to have people talking about you and sharing your stuff on a regular basis.

Write interesting tweets and link to exceptional related articles to share with your audience. It might be a good idea to use other social sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon to find good articles you can easily share. Build up your profile and get re-tweets to your content, especially when you’re linking to your own site.

6. Add links and multimedia where appropriate & use Twitter as a marketing channel

A Twitter search returns tweets, so you may be asking what benefit you get from ranking highly with a 140 character message. The answer to that question is that by getting exposure in Twitter you add a big marketing channel to drive traffic back to your own site and increase conversions. You not only drive traffic to your site through links but you also establish your brand and develop relationships with potential customers – which means a big boost in your bottom line.

Twitter SEO is a lot like email marketing. Your first priority is to develop a solid relationship with your followers by offering interesting and useful content. Once you have that in place you can add your own links and promotional marketing to drive sales.

Facebook Steps Up SEO for Brand Pages with Millions of New Indexable Links

This past November, in a move that increased the amount of Page Rank and traffic Google gives to Facebook Pages, Facebook launched a new feature that essentially added hundreds of millions of new internal links to Facebook’s brand Pages in users’ public search listings.
Public search listings are Facebook’s way of exposing user information to Google.

Before November, the default public search listings included users’ name, profile picture, network, and a few friends’ photos. Now, Facebook has added Pages that users are a fan of to users’ default public search listings.

This means that if a user is a fan of The Gap, U2, or Barack Obama, that information is now listed in that user’s public search listing. In addition, each of those items listed point back to Facebook Pages – such as The Gap’s Facebook Page, U2’s Facebook Page, and Barack Obama’s Facebook Page.

The net result in essence is 112,000 links to The Gap’s Facebook Page just appeared this weekend. 188,000 links to U2’s Facebook Page just appeared, and 3,100,000 links to Obama’s Facebook Page just appeared.

Considering that Facebook turned on links to Pages from about 120 million profile page public search listings, the number of new internal links to Pages on the facebook.com domain this November likely increased by several hundred million.

The SEO experts in the crowd will be able to gauge how impactful this change will be in light of the thousands of complex factors Google looks at when deciding who to give SERP real estate to.

Facebook describes the update to users as a way to make it easier for friends to find you in search results, and that is surely the case:
But ultimately for marketers, this step by Facebook increases the weight Google will give to brand Pages. Brand and marketing managers should not be surprised to see their Facebook Pages rising in Google search results in the months ahead.

So how does this benefit Me for SEO?

In principle the more networked your business’ page is (via customers, friends, vendors, etc.) the more likely you are to show up in Facebook and be found by a potential customer. These pages are also getting indexed in Google and certainly help drive search engine traffic to Facebook, but based on a small sample, most businesses are getting no local search engine optimization help from these pages.

For example, this page for an Arizona adoption attorney may be helping promote this business, but there is a “nofollow” tag on the link to the business’ website, meaning no pagerank is being passed on.

So how does this relate to me as an SEO marketer?

How to Get Local Search Engine Optimization From Your Facebook Page

1. Set up a blog on your website.

2. Go to your Facebook page and click on “Edit Page”, then “More Applications” and browse for a RSS reader application like Simply RSS. Add the app to your page using your blog’s feed url – Make sure your feed urls are on your domain, or if they are going through an RSS manager make sure that the RSS manager 301 redirects to your domain else the links will be redirected and not pass pageran). Now your blog posts will show up on your Facebook page and the posts will not carry the “nofollow” tag. As long as the links are pointing to your domain (and not 302 redirecting via your RSS manager) you should be able to pass pagerank from this page to your site.

3. Post regularly with target keywords in the headlines so that you can get the SEO benefit from keyword rich anchor text.

4. Network your Facebook page as much as possible. The more profile pages that link to your page the more likely your page is to get crawled and the stronger the page rank that will get passed on to your site.

It’s no secret that this decade’s social networking platforms have given way to some of the most infectious online mediums as a means to communicate. Fittingly, viral video has been one of them, and with YouTube dominating the market, everyone including the creators of Facebook and others has been trying to get a piece of the action.

uStream.tv offers anyone the chance to stream live video feeds, collaborate in video chats and broadcast webcasts across the internet.

Anyone with a camera and a usb cord can be on TV – not just not just your NBC, CBS, FOX, etc. Also, it integrates with famed social networking fads, Facebook.com & Twitter, and posts viewers’ video chat comments to their Twitter.com homepage, all while alerting the streamer’s Facebook friends that he or she just started taping a new video.

It’s a well-oiled machine, and from a business perspective, this equates to – free advertising.

Clearly, uStream’s marketing potential is HUGE.

As an example, consider Brittany Spears. Suppose Brittany streams a pre-release of one her new songs and an interview one its servers. Then thousands of Twitter users are jumping at their chance to talk to a real life celebrity, in real time.

“OMG, Brittany is on uStream.tv live singing her new song!”

This means, as a result of her popularity as an artist, potentially thousands of people are typing her name online as a key word.

A watershed of events will now quickly occur: “Brittany’s new song” will become one of twitter’s trending topics (for non-users, one of the most-used keywords in the TwitterVerse), and people who hadn’t heard her new song will be now.

It spawns millions of search engine hits, webpage views, and possibly products bought, which = $$$. Even the placed on this blog post have the potential to make her millions of dollars.

A neat feature of uStream is that is functionality is similar to that of YouTube. Not only can you stream live in a webchat, but you can record what you’re taping for viewing later. thus, you not only have users visiting your uStream page to see you live, you also could potentially draw users to view older videos, the latter of which YouTube is limited to.

Find out more about registering for a uStream account here.

Find out how to set up uStream video and Check out our experimental uStream account here