Reuters reports that company insiders say that Hot Jobs – in addition to Yahoo’s Small Business unit – was on the block for a hoped-for fee of anywhere between $350 million and $500 million.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, speaking at an investor’s conference earlier this week, joked that Yahoo owed a great debt to Tiger Woods for the revelations about the golfer’s personal life that spiked search traffic across the internet. She also confirmed that Hot Jobs was not central to the company’s strategic vision moving forward and could be sold.

Bartz also blamed the company’s declining search numbers – and consequent diminution of relevance to the search engine optimization (SEO) market – on the failure of toolbar deals with HP and Acer that would have seen Yahoo toolbars pre-installed on PCs manufactured by those companies.

Enge writes that, despite the fact that the benefits of long tail search engine optimization (SEO) having been obvious for years, many clients are still unaware of the potential upside to targeting highly specialized queries. He uses the example of a camera retailer, which, by tailoring SEO to specific camera makes and models, brings in more customers who are ready to purchase their products.

The basic assumptions from which Enge works in making his assertions is that roughly 70 percent of search traffic comes from the long tail, 20 percent from what Enge calls the “chunky middle,” and only 10 percent from competitive “head” search terms. The latter can be useful for driving traffic, but conversion rates are usually low, and the investment is frequently not worth it.

Seach engine optimization (SEO) campaigns that carefully target the long tail should see a spike in ROI, according to Enge and numerous other SEO experts.

1. English
2. Chinese
3. Spanish
4. Japanese
5. French
6. German
7. Arabic
8. Portuguese
9. Korean
10. Italian

(*source)

To master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the English language is difficult enough, but what to do with sites that cater to English and Spanish-speaking visitors?  And what happens when you have a site in both languages that targets multiple countries (i.e. America and Mexico)?

To begin, you want to find a hosting company that is native to the country the site was designed to primarily serve.  This is imperative.  Furthermore, you need to ensure the domain name is properly registered for that country.  If you have a primarily English site dealing with real estate in Denver, Colorado, it is best to have yourdomainname.com (or .net or .org).  In Canada use .ca and for the U.K. use .co.uk (same goes for Australia – .com.au)

If you want your Spanish-speaking friends to view condos in downtown Denver, then you would create a Spanish subfolder on the site, such as yourdomainname.com/spanish/ and put the identical content that is now translated into that folder.

Now, there is some debate between setting up subfolders and creating an entirely new site completely in Spanish due to better search engine results when using the two separate sites scheme.  However, if the site is hosted in America (or another host country with the content bearing the host country’s language), and is relevant to that country, it is not only quite appropriate to use the subfolder approach – it is recommended.

On the contrary, If we are building a site in which the content is not country/language specific, the recommended course of action is to build separate sites.  Host one site in America with the English language content and the other site in Mexico or Spain with the Spanish language content.  You would then build links to each site and almost treat them as separate entities.  Should someone wish to visit the Spanish site (or vice versa), provide a link between the two sites as a translation.

One word regarding translations:  when translating your site, do not – I repeat, DO NOT – rely on mechanical means of translation.  Spend the money to hire a person to translate your site, preferably one that lives and works in the language-speaking country so they may be familiar with the native cultural dialects and norms.  One mistranslated word and your site could easily go from selling real estate in Denver to insulting someone’s mamma.  It is just as important for a website to communicate correctly as it does effectively.

This article is just a brief beginning to a tumultuous topic.  The thoughts and reasoning of the SEO community-at-large continue to change on a pretty regular basis when dealing with multiple languages and optimization.  Ultimately, it comes down to what the visitor needs.

Source:

• Unleaded Software

Leapfish’s flagship product is a customizable homepage, which Search Engine Watch describes as being similar to iGoogle. Users can create their own startup pages using a simple graphical user interface to arrange and position various pre-set widgets, predominantly those offering access to Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social media networking tools.

The new search portal has drawn widespread interest from all corners of the world of search marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO). Leapfish adds a new variable into the way in which web users view social media content, and could hamper Google and Microsoft’s expected moves into the social search market.

The two internet giants recently signed separate deals with Twitter to index the popular microblogging service’s content. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals are still trying to figure out exactly how the “real-time web,” as Leapfish calls it, will affect SEO campaigns.

Sterling writes that this could put the search giant into direct competition with VoIP market leader Skype, which boasts a worldwide user base of 480 million people. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals must monitor Google’s move into the VoIP market closely, to ascertain what sort of SEO opportunities present themselves once Google Voice goes public.

Google already offers a Goog-411 service, effectively extending parts of its search functionality onto the mobile platform. This, coupled with the increasingly rapid adoption of Google’s Android cell phone OS, could give the company a solid bridgehead into the mobile market, creating new fields of opportunity for search engine optimization (SEO).

In another article about Google Voice, Sterling notes that consumer privacy advocates are troubled by the further expansion of Google’s data indexing, saying that the extent of the data collection raises questions about the security of personal information.

Writing a guest column at Search Engine Land, Damien Bianchi says that some companies have trouble understanding the costs and benefits of search engine optimization (SEO) because the results are frequently not immediately apparent in the bottom line. Bianchi compares the process to implementing a new content management system: It can be bought, but it might take years for the benefits to become fully evident.

Bianchi says that a good search engine optimization (SEO) program depends on corporate infrastructure, design, localization and content, as well as a thorough understanding of the target search engines. Analytics software and close cooperation with IT departments can also help demonstrate the value of well-crafted SEO to skeptical executives.

Bianchi – among many others – also notes that the world of the search engine is constantly changing, and that successful search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners must always be on their toes for the latest developments.

Keyword research, strategic planning, and a careful eye kept on web development tools are all part of the game for web designers hoping to successfully integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into their project, according to Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch. Enge also warns prospective webmasters that sites with effective SEO will require large quantities of quality content, or at the very least, smaller quantities of superlative content.

Enge recommends that two basic questions be answered before any work is done on a new or revamped website: First, what is the purpose of the website? And how does the firm that owns the website plan to market it? Poorly-planned and optimized sites are one potential consequence of a failure to answer these questions, according to Enge.

Search giant Google recently released an array of helpful tools for web developers, which could ease web design and make for more effective search engine optimization (SEO).

Resources:

Google Webmaster Tools

One sector of the online economy that has been quietly growing for some months now is that of online coupons. As with most print advertising, the traditional coupon is in decline, so advertisers have moved to the web to distribute enticing offers of discounts.

The recent launch by search engine Ask.com of Ask Deals, a massive coupon clearinghouse, means that companies doing business through the new site utilize search engine optimization (SEO) to boost the online profile of their discount offers. Ask Deals will also work via Facebook and Twitter to offer online coupons to interested customers.

Experts say that search engine optimization (SEO) could prove pivotal in driving traffic to a company’s internet coupons. Large conglomerations of coupons like Ask Deals will, necessarily, have to be easily searchable, and the volume of coupons on the site will lend itself to intelligent efforts at SEO.

As search engines merge more and more deeply with online commerce, search engine optimization (SEO) will become a more and more critical function to help businesses develop and maintain a customer base.

Maybe the idea of using Bing for search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t such a big deal after all.

While many have touted the importance of a Microhoo deal which would give Bing and Yahoo a significant portion of the search engine market and make the combined entity more important in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), it seems that Bing has hit a snag.

According to figures released last week from StatCounter, Bing saw its market share in the U.S. and around the globe drop for the first time since it was unveiled earlier this year. In what may make matters worse for the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership, Yahoo also saw its U.S. market share drop more than a full percentage point in September.

Both Yahoo and Bing’s drop appears to be a direct gain for search behemoth Google. According to StatCounter, a combined Bing/Yahoo search presence had 20.14 percent of the U.S. search market in August, compared to 77.83 percent for Google. But in September, Yahoo and Bing saw their share drop to 17.91 percent while Google increased to 80.08 percent.

“The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid-August,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “The wheels haven’t fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft.”

However, it may be too early to count out Bing as last month Nielsen reported that the Microsoft product held 10 percent of the search engine market.

Although many high school students researching colleges head to the web for information, most universities do a poor job of search engine optimization (SEO), according to research from WordStream.

The company says that 15 universities are “excelling at SEO,” while the vast majority of other schools in the country are failing when it comes to using search engine optimization (SEO).

It might not be surprising that some of the top schools using search engine optimization (SEO) are online universities. According to WordStream, Philadelphia’s Drexel University is the top school for its use of SEO, but the online colleges of University of Phoenix, Capella University, Canyon College, Western Governors University American Sentinel University and Northcentral University all rank high.

With the exception of a few traditional schools like Pennsylvania State University and Gonzaga University, WordStream’s Ken Lyons says most schools are losing their online visibility to other websites.

“What I found to be completely bewildering is how the bulk of college websites are outranked by aggregate degree guides or list sites,” Lyons writes on the WordStream blog. “As such, they have to resort to paid search to get listed in the SERPs because they’re inept at SEO. Seriously, college websites (because of their .edu status) are branded, trusted, authoritative, powerful domains and should be able to outrank sites like nursingdegreeguide.org with ease. Yet even with this clear advantage, they still come up short.”

Colleges aren’t the only organizations that can use search engine optimization (SEO) to recruit people. A recent whitepaper from SharkStrike found that using SEO can help companies recruit better candidates for their job openings.

Source:

• Brafton