News about SEO Considerations for New or Improved Websites

News by Seowebmount

Search is still the No. 1 way users find a website, and astronomically so. As such, it’s an important consideration when embarking on a new business venture to think about re-launching an existing site, purchased from a marketplace like Flippa, or to create a new business from scratch.
If you’re simply worried about SEO, the truth is, each scenario has its challenges and benefits. There is no unequivocal rule of thumb that one is better than the other. To determine what’s best for you, examine the list of requirements for each undertaking, and make an informed decision about how to proceed. Below are the most critical considerations for launching a new web business, or revamping an existing site with an overhaul.

SEO Requirements for Brand New Sites

Launching a squeaky clean new website has a serious draw. Imagine the joy of a clean slate, the chance to do everything right out of the gate.
Yet the pressure is immense to get it all done successfully on Day 1. There is so much to consider, it’s easy to drop the ball on any one given focus. To make sure your SEO efforts are aces right from the start, follow these tips:

1)   URL Structure — Be 100 percent sure you’re compliant with your URL structure; this is one part of your site that is a nightmare to change in the future. Obviously, your website name is crucial; be descriptive, avoid special characters, and the more keywords you use the better. Furthermore, avoid creating site sections like blog.website.com — instead, keep your core content within a normal domain structure; blogs should always be at website.com/blog. The same goes for key navigation segments.

2)   Set-Up Your Webmaster Tools — Don’t wait until long after launch to create a webmaster account with Bing and Google. Have this in place straight away, and alert them when you site is live.

 3)   Keywords, Keywords, Keywords — The very moment you’ve decided on a company name, URL, and brand strategy, kick your keyword research into high gear. Then apply these phrases throughout your site in organic and natural places within the text. Yes, images are always important to a website’s aesthetics and appeal; words, however, are still king in SEO, so make sure your copy tells the story of your company with highly targeted keyword phrases.

4)   Double Check Title Tags and Descriptions — These should also be laden with your core keywords, and be fully optimized at launch.

5)   Get Marketing Materials Ready Pre-Launch — Have all your social media profiles good to go, as well as the first couple of marketing campaigns locked and loaded. Start sounding the alarm about your business the moment you feel it’s stable and ready to receive the attention it deserves. Do not wait to handle marketing efforts once you’ve launched the site; you may miss some golden opportunities to start strong.

6)   Test Site Performance Metrics — Be extremely meticulous in the first few weeks about monitoring performance. This includes ensuring your robots.txt sitemap is complete and functional, redirects are performing correctly, all URLs are legitimate (no 404s), you have zero indexing errors, and that all your core pages have appropriate load times.

7)   Benchmark Your Rankings — Once you launch, create an immediate benchmark for your key rankings, and don’t forget to include your company name as well. This will give you a baseline to study SERPs going forward. Set goals early on as well, and methods to create these successes, as a means to be proactive about forward movement.

SEO Considerations for a Website Re-Launch

If you choose to rebrand a site instead, many of the steps above remain the same. There are additional items to include as well — use the list below as your foundation.

1)   Create a Pre Re-Launch Baseline — Just like Step 7 above for new sites, before you make any changes to the existing site, measure all appropriate metrics so your starting foundation is crystal clear. As you determine your new keywords, see how the site ranks for those before you make your changes; this will make it much easier to see how you’re improving things during the re-launch.

2)   Map all Old Pages to the New Ones — Assuming you’re changing the site structure, make sure to move all desired content correctly, or you can do some serious damage. Create a flowchart that maps old URLs to new ones, and follow it religiously. Even if you decide to delete some pages, these should redirect to a page on the new site.

3)   Make 301 Redirects Throughout Your Site — The 301 “permanently moved” redirect is your friend when it comes to moved pages. This is the only reference that will not hurt your SEO rankings.

4)   Update all Marketing Campaigns — You’ll want to update all social media profiles and marketing materials with your new branding images and language, if appropriate. If you’ve developed a new logo, make a list of all places you’ll need to update this, and do so as soon as you re-launch. Don’t confuse consumers with dual branding, or let old marketing campaigns linger.

5)   QA Thoroughly — Once you re-launch your site, it’s crucial that you test all components completely, in all major browsers, devices, and operating systems. Don’t assume your site works as it did before — test things like redirects and core functionality to make sure visitors aren’t encountering any errors.
Whether you choose to start from scratch or to improve upon an existing brand, there are many tasks to cover to ensure great SEO rankings from the start. Remember that if you re-launch a site, it’s completely normal to experience a significant dip in SERPs for the first few weeks; this should improve greatly in a month or so if you’ve covered all your bases.
resource : http://beforeitsnews.com/business/2014/01/seo-considerations-for-new-or-improved-websites-2580424.html

SEO Machine PRO Automates and Streamlines Your SEO Process

By Seowebmount

I'll cut straight to the chase; SEO Machine PRO has arrived — the newest and most powerful Search Engine Optimization software program that is going to take proper care of all of the tedious SEO-related tasks that can slow down your website promotion.

I spoke to Bram recently, the creator with this ingenious tool in which he is a little modest. So I thought you must know a bit more about him.

Did you know that Bram was the winner of the 2011 SEO Idol contest? This is a global competition sponsored of the Israeli jewelry company Shiree Odiz where the brightest SEO professionals from all over the world compete to see who can come up using the most effective software to streamline the company's SEO protocols.

Bram beat out thousands of other competitors to claim the top prize. His award-winning idea, which more than doubled the traffic and sales of the website throughout the course of 2011, served as the starting point for SEO Machine PRO.

The SEO Idol contest might have put Bram on the map, but he's never been one to rest on his laurels. He's taken the notoriety and prize money he received from winning that prestigious competition and put it to work developing what may be the fastest, most efficient option to streamline SEO ever created.

After assembling a group of highly-specialized web experts, Bram developed a one-of-a-kind software program that removes the essential tedious tasks of SEO and performs them automatically so that you can focus on building your online business.

I thought you ought to learn about what a truly remarkable young online marketer Bram is and exactly how the SEO Machine PRO software is certainly going to revolutionise your online business.

Google+ for Business: Cross Platform World Domination

by Seowemount

There is a perception in some circles that Google+ is a failed social network, an experiment by the search giant gone wrong resulting in a space filled mostly with the Internet equivalent of tumbleweeds.

In fact, the statistics consistently show that this is not the case, and anyone who regularly uses Google+ will see healthy and thriving communities engaging, sharing and building relationships globally, with a particular emphasis on the emerging market countries, with apps and through mobile.

Google+ continues to show steady growth in numbers of active users and is increasingly becoming an essential and core platform for businesses as part of their integrated content marketing, search, SEO and social media strategies.

From a numbers perspective, latest figures indicate Google+ may not appear to have the reach of a social network like Facebook but, in fact, it is growing so quickly that predictions have it overtaking Facebook in the next year or two.

However, this is not just about numbers. Google+ and the ever-increasing Google product list provides far greater reach and a more personal experience for its users and directly or indirectly affects the lives of billions of people, brands and global organizations alike.

Google+ Integration Checklist

The insatiable appetite of Google to invest in innovation, product development and cross platform technology reinforces its superior position as a truly integrated experience for its users. Check out this ‘101 Google product’ ( resource and see what you are missing out on.

For this and many other reasons, many predict that Google+ is on track to surpass Facebook and other social networks and become the main platform in the future for both businesses and individual users.

Tens of millions of users are moving away from Facebook each month due to boredom, privacy issues and lack of interest. Furthermore, people are fed up with Facebook throttling the life out of business owners and reducing organic reach for posts, choosing instead to charge businesses for their posts to be seen by their customers.

As a business platform, the infrastructure for Google+ is way ahead of other social networking platforms. While not every business needs a Twitter or Facebook account, it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to maintain an adequate presence online without an integrated Google account — and this will show no sign of letting up.

Cross Platform Domination by Google

Google’s cross platform integration is already evident as it slowly integrates its products across Google+, Analytics, AdWords, Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Authorship, Chrome, Android, Play, Maps, Local, Web Search and more.

Consider this: Every purchase of an Android phone activates a new Google+ account and, with Google Mobile integration now an integral part of Webmaster Tools as well as search and page speed analysis tools, business owners must integrate the Google suite of tools into their cross platform strategies to remain competitive.

With Google tying in their YouTube platform to Gmail — a move designed to eliminate spam comments and hold users accountable for what they post, Google+ is increasingly becoming the social platform glue that will hold everything together.

With authorship and content now inextricably linked and, with more to come, it has never been a better time for business owners and webmasters to get aboard the Google juggernaut and develop their digital content, mobile, search and social strategies to provide meaningful customer experience and real value to a global audience.

Below I have listed some of the benefits and features of Google+ available to both businesses and individuals:

Google+ Features: Something for Everyone

There is little question that Google+ is a superior platform for businesses. If you’re a business, setting up a business page is almost mandatory; it ensures better ranking in search results with established SEO benefits if set up correctly. This does not mean you will rank higher by default if you have a Google business page.

Think algorithm updates such as Hummingbird, content, authorship, engagement, cross-platform social sharing and the search benefits of your Google+ presence will then become more obvious.

All of the content and commenting will be indexed, so it is important to take ownership through proper authorship and by building out a professional profile that reflects your brand. Encouraging engagement, +1’s and shares can inevitably boost your website rank and visibility on search engines.

• A Google+1 button on a company’s website will encourage visitors to follow that business and will appear in search results linked to the business. Google+ also prompts users to write reviews of businesses that have a page.
• Hangouts On Air  — Hangouts allow up to 10 people to videochat simultaneously. With more people, hangouts can be broadcast worldwide for free and stream using YouTube.
• Google Helpouts — Helpouts is a recent addition to the Google portfolio that comfortably bolts into the Google+ platform and provides either a free or paid service whereby you can connect live with an expert anywhere in the world for a Q & A session.
• Google Circles  — Circles make it easier for Google users to separate and communicate with different groups other than Facebook, and they also make it possible for someone to follow another user without that following being reciprocal.
  Circles also allow you to segment content to your chosen audience (or shared circles), so relevant and meaningful circle creation will allow you to reach the intended audience, delivering the right message to the right people.
• Google+ Communities offer a place for every member to post, share, ask questions and comment on community-related content. There are private and public communities and choosing which communities should be considered carefully as content will appear in search in public but not in private.
• Photos and Video – Google+ provides a rich platform for photos and video with a whole slew of enhanced editing features. Although everyone seems to be uploading their vacation photos to Facebook these days, the photo offerings for Google+ are much more robust.
  From larger cover images to useful search features to Auto Awesome Video, — which trumps Facebook’s ‘Year in Review’ by putting significant photos in a video montage overlaid with an audio track — the options are more useful and more inventive.
• Google+ Direct Connect — This is a very powerful feature that allows people to add you to circles straight from Google search. To be eligible, you will need to have authorship set up correctly on your website and Google+ profile.
• Google+ SEO Strategy – Experts are divided on the different types of benefits Google+ has on an SEO Strategy, however, the diverse range of social signals generated within the Google+ social platform, provide a much deeper level of content authority and Google is now looking to content in delivering its search results.

Facebook currently feels so much a part of our everyday lives that it seems unstoppable, but just a few short years ago, most of us did not have a Facebook account.

The site has continued to grow not due to a company tuned into the wants and needs of its user base but because of sheer inertia; people want to keep in touch with family and friends, and Facebook is the place where most of those family and friends hang out.

If the world of the 21st century is a fast-changing one, the Internet changes even more quickly. What seems ubiquitous today is just as easily gone tomorrow.

As Google+ continues to innovate, Facebook worries about how to mine more data from its users and charge for greater exposure.

The focus of Google+ on maximizing its experience for both businesses and individuals will contribute to its continued rise and result in its global supremacy as a social media platform in the coming years.

What are your thoughts on Google+ as a social media platform for businesses? What new features would you like to see Google roll out?

Resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/01/28/google-business-cross-platform-world-domination/

Hottest News : Twitter Introduces Analytics For Twitter Cards

Breaking News by Seowebmount

With an aim to give publishers, developers, and brands an in-depth understanding of how their tweets are performing and interacting, Twitter has launched analytics offering for Twitter Cards.

Twitter Card Analytics will be available to all cards users in coming days. The goal of this upgrade is to help users gain more insight into the type of media that performs the best on the micro blogging site. Twitter Cards boasts of tweets with pictures, videos, content previews, deep links for apps and other rich media tweets. “Now for the first time you can gain insight into how your content is performing on Twitter, and find personalized tips to help make more strategic decisions about your use of Cards”, Buster Benson, Twitter’s Analytics Product Manager wrote in a blog post.
Users will also be able to see how Twitter users engage with all of their tweets and get insight into their followers (including follower growth rate) in the Twitter Card analytics dashboard. Each card type shows the URL click rate and the overall clicks for each. In addition to your own site stats, Twitter is also including average click-through rates of other sites.

The dashboard includes information on your account’s most popular links, top influencers, and best tweets. Twitter also provides additional account data on all of a partner’s tweets and the demographics of its followers. The new dashboard will be rolling out to all Twitter Cards subscribers over the next few days.
resource: http://www.techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Twitter-Introduces-Analytics-For-Twitter-Cards-21397

BSNL, MTNL to launch free roaming plans from January 26

by Seowebmount

NEW DELHI: State-owned telecom firms MTNL and BSNL are likely to launch new roaming plans from January 26 that will offer their subscribers free calls, sources said.

"MTNL has plans to make roaming free for its customers on its network in Delhi and Mumbai without any additional charge," said an official source. He, however, added that BSNL will also have a roaming plan for free calls, but its customers may have to shell out Re 1 a day to avail of the facility.

The schemes are likely to be in place from January 26. Several private telecom operators already offer plans under which, for a monthly or daily fee starting Rs 5, people get all incoming calls without roaming charges. MTNL has operations in Delhi and Mumbai only, while BSNL has operations across country except in these two circle.

MTNL's Mumbai customer will not have to pay any extra charge when they travel to Delhi, and same scheme will apply for its Delhi customers.

Further details of PSUs plans could not be ascertained. Source said that telecom minister Kapil Sibal is likely to announce this scheme within couple of days.

"Minister (Sibal) had asked the PSUs in November to come up with free roaming scheme. Though MTNL made it free, BSNL will levy charge so that it can bear cost. Customers availing scheme will enjoy local tariff wherever they travel," the source said. According to data released by telecom regulator Trai, BSNL has 9.78 crore mobile subscribers while MTNL has 35.75 lakh customers on its network. agencies
recourse: http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/services/wireless-and-wireline/bsnl-mtnl-to-launch-free-roaming-plans-from-january-26/29284973

Google's Competition Is Amazon, Not Apple

News by Seowebmount

People tend to think of Amazon as an online store. But it's so much more.

In the early 90s, Novell Netware was the first website that really impressed me. It displayed a stack of books that you could select to read. The early Internet was purely for the geeks, and then one day, the commercial market figured out that there was money to be made online, and the revolution began. Google and Amazon were two of the companies that arose during this time.

Google's founders and engineers figured out that they could outdo the AltaVista search engine by creating an elegant and simple interface that allowed people to search on the Internet and find what they are looking for. As their search engine became better and better, they started to sell statistics about Google users and thus fueled the ad market. 

Google added numerous services along the way -- some are still with us and some have been retired -- but everything revolved around search. Search engines initially had little insight into human behavior because the person behind the keyboard was unknown. Yes, browser cookies might have shown how often one visited a website, what the IP address was, and how often the device was turned on. But it did not have information about who was doing the browsing. Google finally realized that it needed to compete with Facebook, and it came up with Google+ to track every breath you take and every sigh you make -- and sell that data for more precise advertising.

[What's next for Google? Read Google In 2014: 10 Predictions.] 

The Internet might have begun as a system for communication, but it has become a machine for selling. Well, there is a giant of a company that's totally focused on selling and the measurement of sales that somehow is not recognized by the majority of non-geeks as an IT company. Of course, I am talking about Amazon. Since the beginning of Internet time, Amazon has collected information about the type of powdered milk I purchased for my daughter 16 years ago. It learned about the type of clothing that she has been wearing at every stage of her life. It learned about my purchase aspirations by watching my window shopping behavior through my browser. Every time I clicked on a watch, a banner came up showing what options were similar.

It is Amazon, not Google, that is the best search engine for marketing. If you want to sell, get your data from Amazon.com because it is precise. While Google will sell you magazines, books, video, and music, Amazon does it at least as well or better, as Amazon knows much more about you than the music you like. There is the Google PlayStore for your Android applications, but there's also the Amazon Appstore. Amazon also happens to be the largest cloud provider in the world. Amazon has Amazon Web Services, where large vendors such as Dropbox are hosted. (I wonder if they connect the dots also on their customers' Dropbox behavior.) Amazon also has media streaming services. What's more, it is finally now competing with Google Analytics through a service called Kinesis. And if you are looking for developers, you can certainly find a whole slew of them in the AWS marketplace.

Amazon has its own mobile market -- Kindle -- that can identify all of your habits including reading, searching, location; and, of course, the most important is your spending, merchandise returns, and what you think about a particular item. The precise measurement of this data collection is certainly unmatched by any rival at this time.

We constantly compare two major companies, Apple and Google. But we tend to forget about Amazon. And I think Bezos is finally coming out of the shadows and declaring his company to be an IT power by announcing that Amazon is developing drones for package deliveries. So why is it that if I ask people to describe Amazon, they talk about it as if it were only an online store? Amazon is much more than that. The most interesting competition in the next few years will be not between Google and Apple but between Google and Amazon.

resource: http://www.techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Google-s-Competition-Is-Amazon-Not-Apple-21392

PayPal and eBay make business Best Together

by seowebmount

For more than 18 years, eBay Inc. has focused on enabling global commerce. Connecting buyers and sellers – anytime, anywhere – is how we drive growth and create value.
Payments is an essential part of commerce. Everyone loves to shop. No one loves to pay. So we focus on taking the friction out of paying. We strive to make it easy, safe and secure. And we’re innovating to make payments a way to drive engagement and create more value for consumers and merchants.
This is what we do – and we have been successful exactly because PayPal and eBay are together. It’s why we believe we are so well positioned to lead in the blended worlds of online and offline commerce.
No other payments competitor has achieved PayPal’s success – because no other competitor has a commerce platform like eBay. In fact, today we see more and more commerce and payments competitors trying to replicate the eBay and PayPal model. We are seeing a convergence of commerce and payments businesses, not a separation.
Investor Carl Icahn recently notified us that he is submitting a non-binding shareholder proposal to spin off PayPal and separate the business from eBay Inc. I spoke about this on our earnings call on Jan. 22.
This is not a new idea. Our management team and world-class Board of Directors have considered this as part of our routine evaluation of all of our strategic options. We are committed to doing what’s best for the company and for shareholders. And we strongly believe that keeping the company together is the best way to create growth and maximize shareholder value.
PayPal and eBay make sense together for many reasons. Let me highlight three that we believe are among the most important:
One: eBay accelerates PayPal’s success.
Two: eBay data makes PayPal smarter.
And three: eBay funds PayPal’s growth.
Let me provide a little more perspective on each.
eBay accelerates PayPal’s success … From the beginning PayPal has benefited from signing up eBay customers with virtually zero acquisition costs. Over the last decade, the tens of millions of customers PayPal acquired on eBay have helped fuel its growth off of eBay.
Simply put, eBay and PayPal together create mutually reinforcing network effects.
Mobile is the most recent example of this reinforcing network effect. Mobile is the single most important platform shift in the past decade. And PayPal’s success in mobile payments started on eBay. eBay’s customers were an important source of PayPal’s early mobile payments volume, helping PayPal gain traction quickly and become a mobile payments leader.
Let me give the numbers that illustrate this: in 2010 PayPal generated $600 million of mobile payments volume – 80 percent of which came from eBay mobile apps. In 2013, three short years later, PayPal’s mobile payment volume grew to $27 billion both on and off eBay. That’s massive growth – a 45 times increase in a three year period and a leadership position in mobile payments. Success on eBay enables PayPal’s success off of eBay.
eBay data makes PayPal smarter. Risk is PayPal’s secret sauce. PayPal’s risk management capabilities are a source of competitive advantage. And anyone who understands risk knows that more data makes you smarter.
By providing closed loop global transaction data, eBay enhances PayPal’s world-class risk capabilities and its ability to underwrite both sides of a transaction. This is evidenced by PayPal’s loss rate of only 31 bps on $180 billion of total payment volume. Why in an era of “big data” would we dramatically reduce the amount of data available to PayPal?
And eBay funds PayPal’s growth … eBay is a major contributor to PayPal’s profitability and expansion.
For example, eBay represents approximately one-third of PayPal’s revenue and well over half of its profits. eBay continues to generate 30 percent of Paypal’s new users – at zero acquisition cost. And in 2013, eBay was a significant contributor to PayPal’s profit growth.
eBay also is a significant source of low-cost capital for PayPal, fueling areas such as credit and acquisitions such as Braintree. The economic foundation provided by eBay gives PayPal the latitude to be more aggressive.
PayPal is a phenomenal business. And its strengths and sources of competitive advantage are great today because PayPal is part of eBay. Strong synergies have always existed between PayPal and eBay, and new synergies driving new growth are being created in areas such as mobile. Today, we strongly believe that PayPal is more competitive, more agile, and ultimately more successful when combined with eBay. PayPal and eBay are best together.
Important Additional Information
eBay Inc., its directors and certain of its executive officers are participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in connection with eBay’s 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. eBay intends to file a proxy statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") in connection with such solicitation. EBAY STOCKHOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO READ ANY SUCH PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING ANY AMENDMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTS) AND ACCOMPANYING PROXY CARD WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION.
Information regarding the names of eBay’s directors and executive officers and their respective interests in eBay by security holdings or otherwise is set forth in eBay’s proxy statement for the 2013 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, filed with the SEC on March 18, 2013. To the extent holdings of such participants in eBay’s securities have changed since the amounts described in the 2013 proxy statement, such changes have been reflected on Initial Statements of Beneficial Ownership on Form 3 or Statements of Change in Ownership on Form 4 filed with the SEC. Additional information can also be found in eBay’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012, filed with the SEC on January 31, 2013 and in eBay’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the first three quarters of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013 filed with the SEC on April 19, 2013, July 19, 2013 and October 18, 2013, respectively.
These documents, including any proxy statement (and amendments or supplements thereto) and other documents filed by eBay with the SEC, are available for no charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and at eBay’s investor relations website at http://investor.ebayinc.com. Copies may also be obtained by contacting eBay Investor Relations by mail at 2065 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, California 95125 or by telephone at 866-696-3229.
Forward-Looking Statements
This communication contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the future performance of eBay and its consolidated subsidiaries that are based on the company's current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected financial results for the first quarter and full year 2014; the company's projected financial outlook for 2015; the future growth in the Payments, Marketplaces and Enterprise businesses and the company’s plans with respect to each of those businesses, mobile payments, mobile commerce; and the company's plans regarding its stock repurchase programs. The company's actual results could differ materially from those predicted or implied and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: changes in political, business and economic conditions, including any continuing U.S. government shutdown or default, any European or general economic downturn or crisis and any conditions that affect ecommerce growth; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; the company's need to successfully react to the increasing importance of mobile payments and mobile commerce and the increasing social aspect of commerce; the company's ability to deal with the increasingly competitive ecommerce environment, including competition for its sellers from other trading sites and other means of selling, and competition for its buyers from other merchants, online and offline; the company's need to manage an increasingly large enterprise with a broad range of businesses of varying degrees of maturity and in many different geographies; the effect of management changes and business initiatives; the company's need and ability to manage other regulatory, tax and litigation risks as its services are offered in more jurisdictions and applicable laws become more restrictive; any changes the company may make to its product offerings; the competitive, regulatory, credit card association-related and other risks specific to PayPal and Bill Me Later, especially as PayPal continues to expand geographically and introduce new products and as new laws and regulations related to financial services companies come into effect; the company's ability to timely upgrade and develop its technology systems, infrastructure and customer service capabilities, including our Enterprise Commerce Technologies, at reasonable cost; the company's ability to maintain site stability and performance on all of its sites while adding new products and features in a timely fashion; the company's ability to profitably integrate, manage and grow businesses that have been acquired or may be acquired in the future; the effect the announcement of the shareholder proposal and nominations may have on the company’s relationships with its shareholders and other constituencies and on the company’s ongoing business operations. The forward-looking statements in this release do not include the potential impact of any acquisitions or divestitures that may be announced and/or completed after the date hereof.
More information about factors that could affect the company's operating results is included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by visiting the company's Investor Relations website at http://investor.ebayinc.com or the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this communication, which are based on information available to the company on the date hereof. The company assumes no obligation to update such statements.

resource : http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140123213553-187399433-paypal-ebay-best-together?trk=eml-ced-b-art-Ch-1&ut=1kVtvzqWIRES41

If Content is King, Why Are Content Professionals Paid So Little?

Best news By Seowebmount,

You strike gold with web content when you create stuff that allows people to do things. It all begins with knowing what the person ultimately wants to do. The focus must not be on the content itself.
For example, let’s say someone searches for “diabetes symptoms” and they arrive at a webpage containing content describing the symptoms of diabetes. Why are they there? A traditional content person would say: "They want to read. They want information." No. They want to determine whether they (or a friend or loved one) has diabetes. If they searched for “managing diabetes” then that indicates a different task. For most of us, the web is not academia. The web is real life.

So, if you can’t make money from the content about diabetes, then how can you make money? Through linking. You see, the web is about links. Linking is the essence of the web — always was and always will be. We need to link up everything about diabetes into a logical flow. Linking is about collaborating, about working with other parties — either within or outside your organization — who contribute to the diabetes chain.

So, someone might not want to pay to read content about diabetes symptoms, but they would pay to take a test for diabetes. And they might be willing to buy a book about preventing diabetes. In another context, someone might not want to pay for support content but they will "pay" by buying more of your products because the support content helped them solve their problem.

On the web you don’t start with the content. You don’t write it and hope they will come. Rather, you figure out where customers are going and what they want to do when they get there. Then you write for the search and the task that drives that search. The web is a giant ecosystem and laboratory of human behavior. You are much more likely to succeed if you understand and adapt to customer behavior than if you try to change that behavior.

Content is not where the value lies. It is the channel to the value, the enabler of the value. Very little value resides in content itself but on the next link of the chain, lots of value resides. In fact, there is an explosion of value that is triggered by content. Why? Because the web is made up of links and content, and everyone goes to the web to do things these days. And when we search — as we always do — we frame our search using words (content), we click on words (search results), and we read words on the page we have arrived at. It’s a helluva lot of content that fuels this throbbing hub of modern economies and societies. Without the web our ability to do things is greatly diminished. We need the web. We need content; we just don’t want to pay (directly) for it.

If Content Creators do not link themselves to the value further up the chain then they become valueless. Call it ironical that in a world that runs on content those who create it are not valued. Call it unfair, call it what you want. It’s reality. Deal with it. But if you create quality content, don’t get depressed. The potential value you create is huge. You just haven’t proven it to those who hold the purse strings. You haven’t made the vital link, you haven’t connected the dots.
recourse: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/if-content-is-king-why-are-content-professionals-paid-so-little-023830.php

After Facebook, Google buys startup with Indian link

By Seowebmount

After Facebook's acquisition of Bangalore-based Little Eye Labs earlier this month, it's Google that has now bought a three-year-old startup that had two Indians — Vish Ramarao and Naveen Jamal — as co-founders and offices in Bangalore and California. The startup, Impermium, had a third co-founder Mark Risher.

Jamal was based in Bangalore and looked after the office here, while Ramarao and Risher were based in California. All three had previously worked together in Yahoo and came out of it in 2010 to found Impermium. The startup focused on building security products for websites.

Impermium's website now has just a note from Risher, who was the CEO, with the headline 'Impermium is joining Google'. It goes on to say: "By joining Google, our team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world. With our combined talents we'll be able to further our mission and help make the internet a safer place. We're excited about the possibilities."

Impermium had received $9 million in funding from a host of venture firms including Accel Partners, AOL Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. Google has not disclosed the terms of its deal with Impermium.

Acquisitions of India-based startups by the likes of Google and Facebook are expected to provide a big boost to the startup ecosystem. Not too many India-based startups have had great exits yet, but the latest instances look to be changing that trend. Software product startup associations like iSpirt are actively engaged in trying to marry Indian startups with global ones.

Jamal is originally from Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, went to the US to study, worked as a software engineer in a small US company and then joined Yahoo in 1998. He moved to Bangalore around the time Impermium was being founded and established the office here. Ramarao is from Bangalore, went to the US for higher studies, and has since been there.

Prior to Impermium, all three co-founders were in Yahoo Mail, where they dealt with problems of spam, web security and fraudulent account creation. In an interview to TOI early last year, Risher said they realized that the problems they dealt with weren't an issue with just Yahoo's services but rather a problem with every website on the internet, and that encouraged them to found Impermium.

Risher said the company had built a number of services that worked as a risk-determination system, which could help identify when an account had been compromised. The system calculates the risk from parameters like where you accessed the account from, the device software and historical usage pattern of the links you're posting.

And Risher then had this to say about his new employer: "Security is always a balance between convenience and safety. And a complete overhaul (of the password system) becomes difficult. Google talked about an RFID ring that you would wear and which would transfer a secure certificate. Yes it would work but it would be a hassle and everybody would have to buy a reader. It's not going to happen overnight."

resource: http://www.techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/After-Facebook-Google-buys-startup-with-Indian-link-21280

Facebook Tackles Twitter’s Bread and Butter With New Trending Feature

New by Seowebmount

Facebook is debuting ‘Trending,’ a new feature that enables members to stay up-to-date on popular topics of conversation via the social network.

The addition of Trending — which the social network has been testing since last August — is a direct challenge to Twitter — one that Facebook is likely hoping to use to steal some of its arch-rival’s thunder.

“Facebook is a space where people from all over the world gather every day to share their thoughts and participate in real-time conversations, from the highlights of the Golden Globes to the passing of Nelson Mandela,” engineering manager Chris Struhar said in a blog post.

“Today we’re announcing Trending, a new product that’s designed to surface interesting and relevant conversations in order to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook.”

Facebook image

Trending will appear in a column down the right-hand side of news feed. It will contain a list of topics creating the most buzz online, although it will be personalized to a degree.

Struhar said it will include topics based on what interests users as well as what is trending across Facebook overall. Each item will be topped with a headline that will sum up why a particular item is trending. Users will be able to click on any headline to see the most interesting posts from friends or Pages that are discussing that topic.

Facebook image

Struhar said users can “expect continuous improvements from us over time.”

Trending is currently rolling out to desktop users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia and India. The feature will continue to be tested on mobile.

Resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/01/17/facebook-tackles-twitters-bread-butter-new-trending-feature/

Transforming the Faceless Web with Google Authorship Tools

By Seowebmount

The World Wide Web (www) up to this point can be accurately described as faceless. Websites are loaded with rich content like photographs, videos and audio clips, but until you click on a search engine result and open a website, the entire Internet is just a collection of links.

Google prides itself on its exceedingly simple interface, which is very easy to use and does not offer any kind of distractions to the users. Google started as a search engine and, in spite of the many successful and failed ventures that the company has attempted after that, search is still the biggest source of revenue for the company, and the very heart of its business model. Google regularly updates its search engine algorithms to make searches more useful for the user. The latest update, called Hummingbird, indicates Google is now moving toward curating websites in such a way that they are of greater benefit to their users.

For the past few months, many people have noticed that Google often returns search results that have a photo of the person who wrote the article. CEO Larry Page clarified this and made an announcement that Google was going to give higher rankings to websites that were maintained by people whose identity was verifiable. Google+, the social network made by Google, is used for identification verification purposes and anyone who links their websites to their Google+ profile can not only benefit from better search engine rankings, but also promote themselves along with their articles. The small search result displays a head shot of the writer, his or her Google+ stats and the excerpts of the article, thereby providing the user with a fair idea of what the content will be like and how popular a writer is.

The need for establishing Google+ authorship

Now that Google is tying websites to authors’ identities, popular sites are being forced to adapt. Google+ does not allow fake profiles or pseudonyms, and mandates that people can only sign up with their real name. A number of famous anonymous bloggers had previously shunned the platform because of these rules, and once again by tying identities to websites, Google risks angering these influential personalities. In order to appease anonymous Internet users, Google also offers authorship using Twitter and Facebook profiles, which can be used anonymously. However those who have no problem revealing their identities can simply connect their websites with their Google+ profiles to immediately start getting higher rankings.

How to Setup Google Authorship

The simplest way to sign up for Google Authorship is using your Google+ profile. You can register your website by going to https://plus.google.com/authorship and providing them with an e-mail ID that is hosted on your website. Once you have verified your e-mail address, authorship verification on Google+ is complete. After you have established your identity on Google+ and verified that you regularly write for a website, there are some changes that you must make on your website. Always include a byline name in your articles and ensure that the name you use on the website is the same as the one you have on Google+.

If for some reason you do not have an e-mail ID on the website that you write for, you can set up Google Authorship by directly linking your articles to your Google+ profile, and indicating on your Google+ profile that you contribute to the website.

Advantages of using Google Authorship of tools

The biggest and most apparent advantage of using Google Authorship tools is that your website will start getting higher ranking compared to websites that have not yet adopted this new system. There are also several indirect and long-term advantages of Google Authorship. The number of spam and fraudulent websites will dip as Google identifies them and is able to nip them in the bud. Writers will also be able to create a more personal connection with their readers and build a relationship with them. The verifiability of writers will also increase their accountability and websites will be forced to improve the quality of the content that it hosts. In the end, Google Authorship will benefit the user in more ways than one. It will curb spam, improve quality of search results and start returning more personalized results, thereby improving the overall Internet browsing experience.

resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/01/21/transforming-faceless-web-google-authorship-tools/

Google’s 2014 Plans to Know which is compulsory to do online marketing

If you need to do an online business Promotion, ignoring Google’s antics can be lethal to your bottom line. Google controls large chunks of markets like search engines, hardware, and application distribution. Staying in-the-know about this mammoth company’s latest priorities helps you to know where to focus each quarter in your own marketing and development efforts.

Likewise, if you’re an entrepreneur looking to launch a new business this year, watching the places Google spends most of its time and efforts are great overall indicators about digital industry trends.

So what does Google have cooking for the new year? After a landmark year where it seemed to move at light speed, 2014 promises to be even more revolutionary, fast-paced, and prolific for this online giant. Check out the yearly predictions and trajectories below, and consider these carefully as you map out your own business projections for 2014.

Search: The Heart of Success

Search results have always been the main part of Google’s business, so expect more improvements and SEO finesse for 2014. As Google learns to leverage the myriad of information gathered in its other services (Google+, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, etc.), search results will become more targeted and intuitive. Furthermore, Google will likely become far more proactive in offering search results, as the search engine gets smarter and smarter about each searcher’s specific likes and needs.

As we covered in a recent 2014 SEO trends report, we will likely see a heavier emphasis on things like long tail keywords, semantics and entity search, and mobile pay-per-click efforts as well.

Google saw its ‘stock price top out at over $1,000 in 2013, and you better believe they want more of the same this year. Since we all know content is king in the world of SEO, for Google, content means more cold hard cash. The single greatest investment you can make for your marketing efforts this year is still high-quality, relevant, unique content. It’s really true that some things never go out of style.

The Year of the Glass

2013 saw an avalanche of hype over Google Glass, but without an official consumer release, speculation is all we have. It’s highly likely that Glass will officially launch this year, which has already triggered massive application funding and development.

If your brand lends itself to cutting edge technology, or you simply love to be on the next big thing, watch the trajectory of Google Glass carefully, or get in on the game and start developing your own apps now. Keep in mind the current reviews for Google Glass are mixed at best, but Google is deeply invested in being successful with this new hardware extraordinaire, so the end result is still completely unknown. If you’re a gambler, bet on it making it a serious splash.

New and Improved Android OS

Google launched an Android OS update (version 4.4) called Kitkat in 2013, but without many bells and whistles, it did not make much of an impact. It’s a safe bet that in 2014, Android 5.0 will likely see the light of day mid-year. Fans are hoping for a dramatic improvement to the somewhat gloomy and dark 4.0 theme, and we’ll likely see significant UI improvements across the board.

Any business with a mobile-focused model should stay current with Android’s latest release plans.

The Plight of Google+ Continues

Google+ has certainly not been a slam dunk since its lackluster and slow-to-adopt launch, but never ever count out this social platform as a potential beast. Because Google+ is so integrated and critical to Google’s search functions, this social network has by-proxy staying power. Google continues to work to make Google+ the portal by which we experience all Google applications. This makes a presence on Google+ for your business an outright necessity.

One of the intelligent ways Google learned to leverage the community last year will likely continue tenfold this year. Noticing that some targeted niches saw the heaviest usage of Google+, the company reached out to their biggest user group – amateur and professional photographers – and launched special features accessible only to this community to great fanfare and positivity.

Expect similar updates for other loyal niches this year.

Regardless of whether you benefit from these upgrades, your online business should absolutely ensure a strong Google+ presence; if not for marketing engagement, than at the very least to bolster your SEO.

Trust: Google’s Achilles Heel

There are few areas of tech development that Google doesn’t have its fingers in – from robots to computer hardware, internet service providers to retail outlets, Google shows movement across almost every platform. Yet there is one critical component to Google’s health factor that is really unpredictable this year: consumer trust.

Prior to 2013, Google certainly had its share of detractors, but no significant controversies to point to. Thanks to the post-Snowden era, when the PRISM scandal broke, Google has been facing increasing scrutiny about how they deal with the massive amount of personal data they house. They vehemently deny any spying or wrongdoing with this data, yet at the same time, they have fully admitted “shocking increases” in the number of government requests to access private data.

While we don’t know how, if, or when Google has compromised user privacy, and to what degree, it is obvious that mass consciousness has become increasingly suspicious – and rightfully so. Google’s biggest task this year won’t be launching new operating systems, search algorithms, or high-tech hardware solutions, but keeping or gaining back consumer trust.

resource : http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/01/20/googles-2014-plans-need-know/