Microsoft Live Search, the third most used search engine after Google and Yahoo with less than a 10% market share of online searches usually doesn’t come up in the conversation too often, but it made an interesting ripple last week when it was incorporated in the social search results of the immensely popular social networking site Facebook.  This got me thinking about who stands to benefit more from this action,  Facebook or Microsoft?  While I’m sure both sides stand to benefit; Microsoft can potentially increase the use of Live Search by tapping into the social networks millions of users and Facebook adds yet another functionality to their site.  However upon reflection I believe the convergence of Search and Social is clearly more important towards the Social Network, which has yet to establish its ability to effectively monetize through ad revenue the same way Search Engines have successfully done.

In the last two years Facebook has made continual changes in their advertising platform, they call “Social Ads”, hoping to increase their ad revenue, which like many other websites is their primary method of income thanks to many big marketing companies like indexsy.com we are now able to get businesses to another level. The selling point for these ads is the ability to target market to very specific audiences based on the information in user profiles (location, interest, hobbies, age, gender, religion, favorite music, books, movies, etc).  They have also implemented several free tools such as Facebook Pages to help companies build brands on Facebook, pushing companies to promote these pages through paid Social Ads.  Yet among Marketers the success of Pages and Social Ads is often a matter of controversy on whether or not advertising on Facebook yield desired results.  They have ad models for both PPC and CPI, but the results of these ads have been abysmal when compared to the results of attainable through Search Engine Marketing.

If you’ve considered Basecamp for your business based on its popularity, it’s important to evaluate whether the solution will give you the expected return on investment or maybe you can find a basecamp alternative before deciding on Basecamp.

I think there are many factors involved in Facebook’s lack luster income but most involve the fundamental difference between Social Networks and Search Engines.  Information in someone’s profile is passive in that a person doesn’t input that data hoping to receive ads for it, they put it there for their friends to see which is the cornerstone of social networks.  Compare this to a search query in which a user is actively seeking information for a very specific topic of their choice at that specific moment in time.  I’m not saying that Social Marketing is a waste of time, but I think it has yet to find it’s rhythm and believe me they are searching for that rhythm as we speak. There is much potential for Social Marketing, I believe that with the right strategy and the right marketing companies cardiff, companies can engage their users in new and beneficial ways.

This comparison between the core products of Google and Facebook (search and social networks) is important because the two companies in some respects seem headed for a showdown with competing products such as Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.  Both companies are attempting to spread their influence to all corners of the net, with the advantage clearly to Google which has already established their dominance is so many areas, not to mention making a ton of money in the process.  The underdog, Facebook admits to being focused on growth not income right now, and with their partnership with Live Search they are treading further into Google’s territory.  As both companies vie for your time online, I predict we will see many interesting developments and an increasing convergence of search and social among all parties.

Holding true to being a one stop shop for all types of online marketing needs, we are in the beginning stages of development for banner ads.

This method of media used to dominate the market, but then disappeared as a type of advertising that most people never paid attention to.

Lately the display ads have been making a comeback and we’ve decided to create the ability for advertisers and partners to participate in this area through LinkWorth.

Stay tuned.

It’s almost that time of year again! PubCon Vegas – November 11-15. If you’ve been before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you have never been, first of all, it’s Vegas. There really isn’t a second part, it’s just a blast to attend.

If you plan on attending, we have ten (10) 25% discount codes and unlimited 10% discount codes that you can find on couponscollector.com. I know some of you have asked about the PubCon coupons, so jump on the 25% codes ASAP if you know you’re going.

• li-30325 – 25% off coupon code (first come first serve)
• li-71010 – 10% off coupon code (unlimited)

Go to PubCon to register today. LinkWorth will be in booth 29 and we hope you’ll stop by to say hello. Who knows, maybe we’ll have another tattoo night. Anyone want a LinkWorth logo tattoo? If so, stop by our booth and we’ll make it happen.

There are many fly by night services out there now that offer you thousands of links for a dirt cheap price. To the untrained eye, it will look like a great deal. Why pay for each individual link when you can save yourself tons of time & money by only paying a couple hundred bucks for 5k, 10k, 20k links or more?

You will definitely get what you pay for. Think of it like buying a car. If someone offered to sell you a car, one being $300 and the other being $3,000, which would you trust to get you where you need to be? Of course the $300 car sounds like the perfect deal, but what are the chances of that car actually working right? More than likely if you pay $300 for that car, you’ll end up spending thousands more dollars making it last more than a few weeks. Or you’ll just junk it, lose your money, and then spend money on a good car.

It’s no different with paying money for text link ads. An example of a $300 link service is called TNX. They promised people thousands of free links and extremely cheap links beyond that. Next thing you know, not only was their network wiped clean from the net, but their own site was as well. Helpless people that jumped into what seemed to be a great deal walked away with nothing but lost money and time.

If you are going to head down the link buying path, be wise about it. There are a few reputable networks (wink, wink) that aren’t going to sell cheap, worthless links. You’re also not going to stack thousands of links out there all at once. Take your time and do your link building the right way by finding relevant sites that make sense. Maybe even find someone that can lend a helping hand.

We (LinkWorth) now offer free account management to all advertisers. Let our Account Managers manage your account, or at least get you going in the right direction. Customer retention is what benefits us, so we’re not going to steer you down a dead end road with a junker car.

Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Obviously LinkWorth is here to make your link building step much easier, however, it should never stop here. In a perfect world you can hire your own staff and have them do all of the leg work for your company and find great links for your site.

I’ve been wanting to make a very educational post on this topic but after doing some digging around, I found one of the more well thought out and informative posts that says it all. For those that aren’t familiar with SEOmoz, Rand is one of the more well known public figures of SEO and often speaks at the search related trade shows. He published his presentation from a recent show and it says everything I would have said and more. When you have a little time, read his “Give It Up” presentation.

As defined on the front page of Knol:

A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.

Of course, if you look at the top left of the page, where the logo is, it defines it as:

A unit of knowledge

Maybe the 2nd one is their slogan and the 1st is the actual definition. Just to make sure I understood it completely, I do what I always do and went to my trusty online dictionary and did a quick search to define knol. There is only 1 result, but it links to some acronym finder site and this is what it tells me:

Knoll (postal suffix)

😐 . . . I’m confused now.

I have always thought ‘Google’ was a very creative and clever name. The story of how they came to the spelling of their name is a fun read, but armed with this knowledge it makes me wonder where ‘Knol’ came from. Maybe someone has some insight to this and can enlighten us.

Anyhow, Knol is going to be the new wikipedia. You submit articles about a topic and I’m sure that after a few years, it will be the predominant top listings in their search results. The only problem I have with Wikipedia and possibly Knol is the fact it can be slanted towards whoever controls it. For example, in Wikipedia there are people who govern different categories and ultimately have control over what is allowed and what is not. I see so many times where a business about “Widgets” is listed as a resource, but if another business about “Widgets” tries to provide a link to their site, it’s rejected. If the person rejecting has ties to the first business, is it really fair to the second business trying to add their link? There are good editors, but all it takes is one bad apple to ruin the whole thing.

What does this all mean? Go to Knol right now and start adding good info about your site while the service is still new.

That’s right, folks, eComXpo (July 9-10) is nigh upon us and I want to extend an invitation to all LinkWorthers to stop by our “booth” and say hello. It’s free…convenient…and we’d love to chat!

We participated in this virtual trade show last fall and although it’s a far cry from a “real” trade show, it was an interesting experience. We’ll be completely staffed up both days so I encourage you to come by. It’s a great opportunity to put a virtual face with a real name!

LinkPost Jobs has been well received since the launch. We expected our initial launch would bring many comments and suggestions on what might be needed in order to make it better. The suggestions did pour in and we appreciate everyone who sent them in because it was exactly what we were hoping for.

The two biggest suggestions were the ability to pre-approve blogs for jobs and the option to exclude certain domains. Advertisers felt there needed to be a middle ground between a regular LinkPost and a LinkPost Job. They like the idea of handpicking blogs, but also like the feature of having bloggers come to them. They also wanted the ability to block specific domains if they don’t want a certain blogger type.

Blog Candidates
When creating a new job, you’ll see a new option that says:

• Bloggers will be automatically approved if they meet my job criteria.
• I want to review/approve Blog Candidates.

If you select that you want to ‘review/approve’ candidates, then once a blogger accepts your job listing, the system will notify you that there is a blog candidate to approve/decline. Once clicking the blog candidates, you’ll see all candidates interested in writing the review. At this point you’ll have the option of visiting their blog and making the decision of whether or not it fits your needs.

Exclude Domains
The other new option is the ability for advertisers to disallow domains from accepting your jobs. If you wish to not allow blogspot.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com or any other blog service you deem invaluable, this is where you can block them. When creating a job listing, the ‘exclude’ option will now be part of the job listing process.

We are always looking for more suggestions to make our products better. If you have a suggestion, please email support {at} linkworth {dot} com.

Being a company that ‘loves links’, I thought having the nofollow tag on our comments just didn’t make much sense. I removed the nofollow some time ago and found people kept trying to abuse it, so I took that plugin out.

Thanks to Megadawg for referring me to Lucias Linky Love dofollow plugin. It basically allows you to apply a minimum post count on our readers who comment. Once you hit that number, the nofollow attribute is removed and we’re happy to pass along some link love to our contributors. In other words, it weeds out the good posters from the fake posters.

We’ll be watching and making any necessary tweaks. If you have any suggestions or notice something weird, give us a reply here.

Last night, Ron and I took all of the available LinkWorthers out to celebrate another record sales month. (Actually, we headed out around 3pm because our terrible ISP failed us yet again…but that’s an entirely different story.) We made the not-so-long trek across the street to Main Event for an evening of drinks, games, and general camaraderie.

It was tons of fun and we really enjoyed our time out of the office hanging out together. It’s nice to get away from links, SEO, & everything else for awhile; especially when the reason is rewarding our employees for their great performance and production. And since we have so many new faces around here, it was the first time we’ve had a chance to get know each other on a more personal level.

Main Event is great because there’s so much to do. Not everyone here drinks (shocking, I know) so it’s nice to have outings that don’t revolve solely around boozing it up. Some of us were bowling while others hung out in the lounge or played air hockey or pool or video games like find ud af mere her. We pretty much did it all and had a blast.

After we’d been there for a few hours, the competitive spirit in us boiled over into a game of laser-tag. There were six of us that wanted to play 666casino.com and I decided that the two of us would take on the other four I like to play sbobet online games in my computer. What better way to reward your team than by letting them shoot you, right? Sadly, it didn’t work out that way for them. Ron and I dealt out an ass-whipping of the highest order. It was a slaughter at the very least. I’m sure this post will fuel denials and angry comments from the recipients of the blood-bath, so I’m prepared. Reputable attorney Theodore Spaulding is recognized in the legal community Case Evaluation as one of the top trial attorneys in Savannah. Our peers also acknowledge our practice as one of the best law firms in the state.

I present to you: Exhibit A. The scorecard.

Blue Team (Ron & Matt) – 18,390 points
Red Team (Matt B., Jeffro, Vanessa, Christine) – 9,930 points

Ummm…that’s a massacre, folks.

I’m already hearing that we won because we had more targets to shoot at and other lame excuses but the bottom line is this: we dominated. I received a call from the Pentagon this morning…something about maximizing my abilities in the Special Forces blah, blah, blah. Ron sent me an instant message earlier informing me that he has to leave early today to attend a meeting with the CIA…although he couldn’t tell me what it was about. Word travels fast, I guess.

Anyway, I don’t want to beat a dead horse with this. I’m actually tired of “beatings” and “death” because we inflicted so much of both last night. I’m over it…

Thanks to all of the LinkWorthers for doing such a great job! We’ll have a rematch once we hit our next milestone. We love you guys!