DES PLAINES, Ill., Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
For over 25 years, the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has published Hot Wheels, an annual report of America’s 10 most stolen vehicles. While popular expectations have been that newer, more expensive vehicles would top the list, the data has repeatedly shown quite the opposite, with older, less flashy models topping the list.

As a take-off from our traditional Hot Wheels report, beginning with this release, the NICB will periodically issue a special report–Hot Wheels Classics–focusing on a specific class of vehicle or make and model. For the debut report, NICB selected the iconic Ford Mustang.

Since it was first introduced to the public at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, nearly eight and a half million Mustangs have been sold, making it one of the most popular and enduring vehicles to ever grace a dealer’s showroom.

Unfortunately, over the years many Mustang owners have had to deal with the theft of their pony cars. Aside from the hassle of losing their transportation and all that entails, a Mustang loss can be overwhelming given that many owners form an emotional bond with their machines. You would probably have to own one to understand that.

NICB reviewed Mustang theft data from 1964-2011 and identified 611,093 theft records. Although data for all years is available, confidence in pre-1981 records is low due to the inconsistency in reporting protocols and vehicle identification number (VIN) systems in use prior to 1981.

Since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration required VIN standardization beginning with the 1981 model year, that year is the oldest reliable data used in this report. Data prior to 1981 is provided for information only.

Overall, from 1981 through 2011, a total of 411,155 Mustangs were reported stolen. The most thefts occurred in 1981 (20,708) and the fewest in 2011 (4,347).

Thefts vs. Sales

During the 30-year period from 1981-2011, a total of 4,110,110 Mustangs were sold in the United States. However, over the Mustang’s entire lifespan through the end of 2011, a total of 8,450,741 units have been sold in the United States. The single year with the most U.S. sales was 1966 with 549,436. Conversely, 2009 logged the fewest Mustang sales reaching only 66,623 units.*

The following graph shows the top 10 most stolen Mustang model years for the period 2001-2011. Overall, a total of 91,152 Mustangs were stolen during this time frame; the top 10 listed below accounts for 45,421 thefts or 50 percent of all thefts during that period.

        2001 - 2011 National Mustang Thefts
        Model Year Most Stolen Number of Thefts
        2000                   7085
        1995                   6790
        1998                   5394
        2001                   5103
        2002                   4226
        2003                   3966
        1994                   3949
        2004                   3234
        1996                   3045
        1989                   2629
        Total                  45,421

The complete theft data is here.

At NICB, we have been in the business of identifying and recovering stolen vehicles since 1912. Our expertise has been sought by law enforcement agencies all over the nation to assist with major auto theft investigations. Frequently, NICB recovers stolen vehicles that have long since been forgotten — except by their owners.

NICB Reunites Stolen Shelby GT-350 with its Owner

In 1982, a Mustang owned by a young Marine stationed at Cherry Point, North Carolina, was stolen. This was no ordinary Mustang; it was a 1965 Shelby GT-350. The Marine soon deployed and never saw that car again–until 2007 when an NICB agent contacted him with news that his Mustang was located in Maryland.

In the intervening years since it was stolen, the Mustang’s true identity — its VIN — had been painstakingly altered and matched with a fraudulent title. It was then sold to an unsuspecting buyer who eventually put a new $12,000 Shelby engine in it.

See an NICB video on this Mustang investigation and images of the vehicle here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XRE3yw-PdM .

The duped owner was contacted in 2007 by the Maryland State Police and an NICB special agent asking to inspect his Shelby. As you can imagine, he was absolutely dazed when they informed him that his prized possession was, in fact, stolen property.

That young Marine from 1982–now a professional airline pilot–was overjoyed when he was notified that his dream car had been recovered and was in excellent condition. And, in a classy gesture of goodwill–he was not legally required to do so–the pilot gave the former owner a check for $12,000 for the engine.

Whether or not you own a Shelby Mustang, take steps to protect your vehicle from theft. Although vehicle thefts have been declining in recent years, if it happens to you it can be financially devastating and just an all-around hassle. NICB urges motorists to follow its “layered approach” to auto theft prevention. By employing these simple, low-cost suggestions people can make their vehicles less attractive to thieves.

NICB’s four layers of protection are:

Common Sense: Lock your car and take your keys. It’s simple enough, but many thefts occur because owners make it easy for thieves to steal their cars.

Warning Device: Having and using a visible or audible warning device is another item that can ensure that your car remains where you left it.

Immobilizing Device: Generally speaking, if your vehicle can’t be started, it can’t be stolen. “Kill” switches, fuel cut-offs and smart keys are among the devices which are extremely effective.

Tracking Device: A tracking device emits a signal to the police or to a monitoring station when the vehicle is stolen. Tracking devices are very effective in helping authorities recover stolen vehicles. Some systems employ “telematics” which combine GPS and wireless technologies to allow remote monitoring of a vehicle. If the vehicle is moved, the system will alert the owner and the vehicle can be tracked via computer.

Anyone with information concerning vehicle theft and insurance fraud can report it anonymously by calling toll-free 1-800-TEL-NICB (1-800-835-6422), texting keyword “fraud” to TIP411 (847411) or by visiting our Web site at
www.nicb.org .

*All Mustang sales figures provided by Automotive News Data Center.

About the National Insurance Crime Bureau: headquartered in Des Plaines, Ill., the NICB is the nation’s leading not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to preventing, detecting and defeating insurance fraud and vehicle theft through data analytics, investigations, training, legislative advocacy and public awareness. The NICB is supported by more than 1,100 property and casualty insurance companies and self-insured organizations. NICB member companies wrote over $319 billion in insurance premiums in 2010, or approximately 80 percent of the nation’s property/casualty insurance. That includes more than 94 percent ($152 billion) of the nation’s personal auto insurance. To learn more visit
www.nicb.org .

SOURCE National Insurance Crime Bureau

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ford-mustang-thefts-a-look-at-thefts-of-an-american-automotive-icon-2012-01-31

In just a short span of two decades, the Internet has changed the way we live and how we go about carrying out our business. In the early ’90s, the Web started as a read-only place where people could just browse and get widely scattered information. One example is the early version of Yahoo, which used to be a directory of various links on the Internet.

After the dot-com bust in 2000, the Web went through a serious transformation when a few Internet companies were able to establish successful business models around their offerings. For example, Google incorporated a simple, keyword-based advertising model for its search engine, eBay pioneered online auctions and Amazon became the successful online department store.

By now the Web had transformed itself into an interactive platform, popularly known as the Web 2.0, where you use the Web not just to receive information, but as an interactive medium where you can both read and write. A whole new era of Web services had begun. People took to blogging and many even started conducting their own business and personal activities on the Internet.

Imagine you wanted to go to a movie. In the past, you would have to go to a movie theater to book the tickets. Now, with Web 2.0, you can search the Internet to find the movies playing in the theaters near you, book and print the tickets from the convenience of your home. That’s the new Internet for you, and a variety of Web applications are making our lives easier and making us more efficient at conducting business.

There’s an App for That
It seems like there is a Web app for almost anything you want to do. Facebook is changing the way we socialize; twitter is growing as a communication platform; Dropbox and Box have made sharing files a breeze; Google apps are reducing our dependence on desktop applications; Groupon gets us the best deals; QuickBooks has revolutionized the way we manage our accounts and so on. Every day new apps are launched, adding newer capabilities to the Web.

Let’s look at some of the business models used by these web apps.

Advertising and Sponsorships
This is, so far, the most popular business model used across the Web. In this model, instead of charging the users for content or services, the apps place advertisements to earn money. The advertisers are usually charged on the basis of cost per click (CPC), or cost per thousand (CPM). Many large sites, such as Google and Yahoo, have found great success in this model. The model became very popular when Google came up with AdWords, the self-service advertising platform that allows advertisers to widen their reach by placing their ads next to the search results. Such advertising saw great success, as it was highly targeted based on the keywords being searched by the users. Google then launched the AdSense program, which allows even small publishers to start displaying ads in their blogs or sites; they then benefit from Google’s huge reach and ad inventory. Today, many apps use advertisements as their only source of income.

Paid Products and Services
In this model, the app charges its users a fixed or a periodic fee for using their product or service. Most apps follow a freemium model, where a basic level of product or service is provided free to the user, but to use the full product they will have to pay. Some apps even support their free version with advertisements and offer an ad-free version with additional features at a premium. Examples of companies following this model are Dropbox and Quick Books Online. Even gaming companies like Zynga make money in this way. Both of them have a free basic version and charge their customers to use the full product.

E-commerce
This is another popular business model where companies set up online shops to sell physical and digital products. For physical goods, the companies maintain warehouses with inventory of their products, while customers go to the online shops and make purchases. Even the payments are collected online, via electronic payment gateways. On receipt of the order and payment, the products are then shipped to the customer. The company makes money from each sale, like a traditional brick-and-mortar business; however, without maintaining a number of actual stores, overhead is significantly lower. Profit margins, therefore, will depend largely on how efficiently they run their businesses. The most popular companies following this business model are Amazon and eBay.

Even services are being sold online. For example, elance.com is a freelance network that connects buyers of services to the sellers, and provides them with a platform to work on projects. Elance earns by charging a commission on each of the projects completed over its platform.

The Bottom Line
These are the three most widely used methods for Web apps to make money. The Internet continues to evolve and we will see a lot more activity in the future. Web gurus are already talking about the Web 3.0 revolution, where the focus of applications is going to shift to data and personalization. In the future, the apps will make finding and acting on information easier than it is now; such advancements will bring along even more business opportunities.

Original story – 3 Ways Apps Make Money

Copyright (c) 2011 Investopedia US. All rights reserved. Investopedia.com is a division of ValueClick, Inc.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/31/investopedia71055.DTL

This week’s tool review focuses on the Link Builder toolset from Wordtracker. Wordtracker has been around since 1998 and is most widely known as a keyword research tool.

In 2010, they added Link Builder in response to consumer demand and to help their keyword customers with their link building efforts. Based in London, the Wordtracker staff is an international bunch, hailing from England, France, Italy, India, Australia and Ireland. To prove this,  CMO Ken McGaffin jokingly pointed out:

I’m an Irishman, living in Scotland, working in London for an English company that does most of its business in the US.

In addition to its tools, Wordtracker has a popular SEO blog and a number of free instructional videos. Let’s take a look at some of the key elements behind Link Builder.

Getting Started

If you’ve read my previous link building tool reviews, you’ll know I am a stickler for detailed “how-to” instructions. I think it’s important these resources be well written and available in multiple formats so webmasters spend minimal time learning and more time linking.

In this regard, Wordtracker gets an A+. The video and written tutorials are the best I’ve seen so far and do an outstanding job explaining how each part of the tool works. I spent a total of 30 minutes watching the videos and reading tutorials, I found I only had to refer back to them one time during my test run, they are very well done.

Another plus for Wordtracker is the way it returns everything in real-time. You don’t have to wait days for data to accumulate or set up a profile manager, results come back almost immediately and in great depth. You have multiple choices in the way you can filter and categorize the data and there is a spreadsheet export function.

Like all linking tools I’ve reviewed, the key to this tool’s success is in the number and scope of keywords and competitive URL’s you use. The more, the better — so don’t skimp or overlook any of your keyword terms.

Start With A Keyword

You can begin your data collection by asking the tool to search on keywords or the URL’s of competitors. I picked the keywords “memory foam mattress” to begin my project.

I inserted my keyword phrase (1.) “memory foam mattress”, selected the country I wanted to target my results from (2.), added the name of my site so the report would show who was linking to my domain (3.) and set up a new file (4.)

Here’s what came back after a 90 second wait:

Over 20,000 results were returned as potential prospects, what you see highlighted in pink are links using the nofollow attribute. The results were seperated by “Strategies” (left column) or link type, this helps categorize the large amount of information returned and allows for further filtering.

I decided to select “News media” since it had the largest number of potential prospects (2774) and is one of my favorite categories to work in. I set the Filter option to return links using the term “mattress” in the anchor so I’d have a more focused set of results to work with.

In the first ten results returned for “News Media”, only one was a news outlet reporting on mattresses. Eight of the results were directories (see image above) and one result was comment spam using the term “mattresses” as a username.

The downside here is a lack of true media results, but on the other hand, I knew there were some solid directory leads returned in the run.

Still, I wasn’t thrilled with the listings and wondered if this was more a result of my keyword term being “non-newsy” or if the tool had a bug. So I ran a second phrase, “political candidates” which is definitely a more news worthy term and let the tool go.

I was right, the mattress term just doesn’t generate media mentions while the second politcal term does.

While the features and operations of this tool are solid, the fact it can only run a single term at a time makes it time consuming to use. If you’re running hundreds of terms or have multiple sites, I’m not sure this tool is for you.

On the other hand, if you’re a small business or have a dedicated linking staff and break your terms and/or sites out by single phrase, only being able to run one term at a time might not be an issue. The laser focus this tool forces you to have will help you run a targeted linking campaign and become well aquainted with your search engine results.

Contact View

Hands down, the best feature in this toolset is the Contacts View option, it pulls contact information off a webpage and organizes it in one spot.

After you’ve run your keywords and collected a list of prospects, save them to a “Targeted” list and engage the “Find contact data” option for each link.

The Link Builder tool then spiders each of the saved prospects by visiting the “About Us” and “Contact” pages on each site and pulling email, telephone, plus any Twitter and Facebook links it finds.

Once you’ve made contact with the site, you can record your actions in the Status box and have a record of what you’ve done and how the webmaster has responded.

If for some reason the Wordtracker spider can’t pull information off the About and Contact pages, there are live links in the account box you can click and pull the information from.

There is a little quirk with this option I would not have known about had I not read the tutorials. The Contact View option takes some time, while it runs you see a busy signal as the data loads. If it goes on too long, refresh the page and the results will display.

Again, if I hadn’t read the help section I could have become frustrated and wasted time contacting Support about this issue. Even worse, if I was using the tool in the trial or first 30 days, I may have cancelled my subscription thinking the tool had a bug. Take the time to read the tutorials carefully before you begin, they really do help.

Strategies

Link Builder offers a detailed written outline of tactics you can consider using, they correspond with the Strategy categories the tool pulls data to:

 

 

The strategy guide offers step-by-step instructions how to use the tool’s special features to build links. If you’re stumped for tactics or just want to venture into a new area to build links, this guide will help you get there. In addition to the Strategy guide, Link Builder has a library of link building articles you can peruse for ideas and insights.

Closing Comments

Like a lot of link building tools, Link Builder has its pluses and minuses. I like how the tool automatically highlights links using the nofollow attribute and I love the organization and functionality of Contacts View.

Link Builder is aesthetically pleasing, easy to use and has links to the help section on every page.

For many, this simple tool would be all they need to build links, a contact database and monitor competitors. While the simplicity is good for some, I can see the lack of programming, social media information and analyzing factors a hindrance for others.

The tool does not analyze quality, display PageRank or any other type of authority measure outside of ranking. Granted, knowing where a page ranks is the ultimate authority measure but having additional factors to look at is helpful. Ditto for having social media signals included, with these signals (supposedly) being written into the algorithms this SEO information is crucial for all webmasters large and small.

Link Builder does not offer the option to search on a term and utility phrase because of the way it sorts data.

For example, if I wanted to build a list of sites using the term “running shoes” and “add URL”, I would need to purchase a seperate tool as this function is not included in Link Builder. Having pages returned hosting the term “running shoes” is good, and separating those pages by topical category is helpful, but I still have to wade through thousands of results to determine how I can use them. If I know a page has a submission area on it, my search time is cut in half.

Another drawback as I see it pertains to its lack of programmability. Each time you want to use Link Builder you have to manually run it, there are no scheduling options or presets. Having instant results is great, but being able to generate a list of prospects in my sleep would be better.

If time is not an issue, you are new to SEO or you are a single site/small business owner with minimal social media interactions, Link Builder is an affordable tool option. I recommend signing up for the seven day trial and using all the features before buying a membership.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Link Building: General | Link Week

Article source: http://searchengineland.com/link-building-tool-review-wordtracker-link-builder-109354

In this article, I’ll outline the steps I take to optimize a webpage to try to improve organic search results;  both increase rankings and improve click-throughs from the search listings.

If you’ve been following along in this series, we covered the first steps in the previous two articles.

1. Choose The Keywords To Focus On

In Organic Keywords: The First Step In Search Engine Optimization, I covered how to use Google analytics to choose the organic keyword phrases to focus on first in your optimization efforts; those keywords already contributing to the business goals. We then looked at how to use Google analytics to help “map” those keywords to existing pages on the site.

Below is a copy of the prioritized keyword mapping we developed for a client in one of the previous steps. I’ll refer to this later.

Prioritized keyword mapping

2. Prioritize Your Keywords

In How To Prioritize Keywords For Optimization Based On Organic Competition,I covered how we prioritize the keywords by evaluating the difficulty of reaching top organic results.

3. Check That Important Content On The Page Is Getting Indexed

As I start optimizing a page, I check to make sure all the important content on the page is getting indexed by checking Google’s “text-only” version of the page’s cache, Bing’s cache, and/or using one or more page analyzers or crawlers.

Find the page in Google or Bing’s index with a “Site:domain.com keyword phrase” search. In Google, hover over the search listing then hover over the arrows that appear at the end of the listing to see the page snapshot. Then click on the “cached” link above the page snapshot.

View Google Page Cache

Finally, when the Cache version of the page appears, click on the “text-only version” link.

View Google’s Text Only Version of Page Cache

In Bing, you also hover over the listing, then hover of the arrow that appears. A window with info about the page will appear. Click on the “cached page” link.

By doing a “Site:domain.com keyword phrase” search, the keyword phrase will be highlighted if Bing can read it. You can also select sections of text on the page to see if the text is editable text that can be read by search engines or whether the text actually part of an image.

View Bing Page Cache

I put the cache version of the page side by side with the actual page and compare the two. I’m looking to make sure that all important content on the page is getting indexed.

I make note of any issues that we need to discuss with the web developers such as the use of techniques that are not indexed easily by search engines (Flash, content included by JavaScript calls etc). I also make note of text in images that we’d ideally like change to indexable text.

If employing more search engine friendly methods isn’t currently an option, I’ll make a note not to optimize that content since it isn’t being indexed anyway.

4. Ensure The Indexed Text Is Unique

Next, I make sure the content on the page I’m going to optimize is unique.

Copy a snippet of what appears to be unique text from the page that you are going to optimize. Then search for it in Google with parenthesizes around the text.

If you get multiple results for a search on unique text, examine the files to see if a large portion of the content is indeed duplicate or very similar.

If the pages are duplicates or very similar content located on multiple websites, this may be a case of multiple web sites using similar content (very common with affiliate or ecommerce sites that use content provided by manufacturers etc).

If you find this to be the case for a significant amount of the content on a page you are going to optimize you’ll need to decide whether to rewrite the content or attempt to include “enough” unique content on the page otherwise you’ll be competing with all those other sites for listings.

However, before you start making significant changes like this to a page see the note below About Potential Effects on the Conversion Rate.

There are other reasons you may find duplicate content on other websites such as the content having being scraped and used elsewhere which you’ll want to deal with (that could mean getting a lawyer involved).

You might also find duplicate paths (URL’s) to the same pages or other pages on the site with very similar content which is another issue that can affect rankings. See How To Improve Organic Search Results With A Simple Site Audit for more about duplicate paths.

A Note About Potential Effects on the Conversion Rate

Before we get started actually optimizing, I do want to point out that I’m very careful not to make extensive changes to content on a page that is already converting well.

If you’ve been following the steps outlined in this series of articles, then you are likely optimizing pages that have been generating business. Just about any change you make on a page can affect the user experience and have an effect, either positive or negative, on the conversion rate.

Many of the changes we make are fairly subtle changes to existing text and images that shouldn’t have a dramatic effect on the conversion rate.

However, if you are going to make fairly extensive changes such as adding new content, completely rewriting content etc then consider testing those changes first using either an a/b test within a PPC campaign or a multivariate testing system such as Google’s Website Optimizer to make sure you don’t significantly decrease the conversion rate.

5. Try To Improve The Search Listings For The Keywords

Search for each keyword phrase you are going to focus on and determine how the search engine is generating the search listing so that you can attempt to improve it if needed.

In this case, you’ll want to search for the phrase the same way most people search, that is without putting quotes around the phrase. So for one of the phrases in the keyword mapping example above, I’ll search for [chrome frame sliders] without putting quotes around the phrase.

In North America, you should check the listings for at least Google and Bing (The Yahoo listing will be very similar to the Bing listing).

Tip: Rather than searching through pages of listings to find a search result you can append the keyword phrase to a Site:DomainName search. It’s the same listing. I’ve checked this many times. A Google search for “site:domainname.com chrome frame sliders” for example returns the same listing as does a search for [chrome frame sliders].

Determine How The Search Engine Generated The Listing

 Next determine how the search engine generated the listing; by extracting text on the page, from the Meta Description Tag, some combination, etc.

Google may still display the listing from the Open Directory Project, but typically only for the home page. I believe Bing/Yahoo may still display the listing from the Yahoo Directory, although I haven’t seen this in some time. I also see Bing displaying listings from the Open Directory Project.

If the results being displayed from a directory are not ideal, you can try to update the directory listing (which can take quite a while with the Open Directory Project) or see this Google article for information about how to use a noodp Meta tag to tell search engines not to display the description from the Open Directory Project. See this article for info on how to use a noydir meta tag to stop Bing/Yahoo from displaying the listing from the Yahoo Directory.

Try to Influence the Search Listing

I list all the current search listings for the phrases I’ll be focusing on as well, as well as average rankings, CTR etc., as I optimize a page and try to improve the listing by modifying the text the search engine is pulling from on the page whether it’s text on the page or from the Meta Description Tag or some combination.

For example, a typical Google search listing for an important keyword phrase was being extracted from the main paragraph of text on a client’s home page.

The listing was not horrible (many are) but the CTR for this listing was low. I reworked the message on the home page to make it more client focused which lead to a much more enticing search listing.

6. Update Or Add A Headline

Page headlines are usually read by your human visitors so I try to make sure most pages I work on have one. If I can include one or two important keywords in it all the better. This not only should help rankings but also help assure site visitors who just searched on the keyword that they came to the right place.

7. Optimize Existing Text

Next I make suggestions to optimize the rest of the visible text on the page. These are usually very subtle changes as I try not to negatively impact the conversion rate. I look for ways to include variations of the  important keywords without forcing them into the text and making the messages awkward (Remember your human visitors come first).

Here’s an example of some existing test from the motorcycle frame sliders page:

“These were produced by Diamond Powersports and are made of high quality Delrin or Chromed Billet Aluminum and are designed to protect the motorcycle’s fairings and frame in the event of a fall over or other accident.
The materials used maintain the color even if scratched or chipped. The color is solid throughout the part and is not a surface coating. These sliders come complete with superior grade metric bolts and high quality machined mounting brackets if needed for the make and model of your machine.”

And here’s how I’ll suggest they modify this text.

“These frame sliders were produced by Diamond Powersports and are made of high quality Delrin or Chromed Billet Aluminum and are designed to protect the motorcycle’s fairings and frame in the event of a fall over or other accident.
The materials used maintain the color even if scratched or chipped. The color is solid throughout the part and is not a surface coating. These frame sliders come complete with superior grade metric bolts and high quality machined mounting brackets if needed for the make and model of your machine.”

I could have “forced” keyword phrases into this text even more but at the expense of readability. I then continue on and make subtle changes in the rest of the visible text on the page.

8. Look For Text In Images

There is often content on webpages that can’t be read by search engines including text within images. I’m working on a website now, for example, where the only visible text on the home page is actually within an image.

As search engines are extracting text to create search listings from the only text they can read, they are only grabbing a few news items that appear on a mouse over. This is leading to irrelevant search listings that won’t help entice people to click though to the site. Plus, we can’t optimize the text to improve rankings and listings.

So, I’ll be recommending they have a Web developer rebuild the image using text that the search engines can read. A skilled web developer should be able to rebuild most images so that text is search engine friendly using CSS, background images, etc. I’m amazed at how many clients use Web developers that have no clue how to do this. If search engine results are important to you (you’re reading SEL so I assume they are) then find an experience developer who can do this.

9. Possibly Add New Content On The Page

After editing the existing content, I may look for places to add new content on the page, especially if we need more content in order to focus on important keywords. Here are some ideas.

Left/Right Column Content

I look for places on the page to add content that can be both helpful to the user and may help improve search results and conversions.

For example, I might suggest some sales or positioning messages in the right of left columns. I’ll ask if the client has any testimonials and possibly insert snippets from one or an entire testimonial in right column, ideally on that includes one or more important keywords. If they have some useful articles they’ve written, I might suggest putting a summary in the right column that links to the full article.

Content Below The Fold

I sometimes develop a paragraph or more of text and suggest they add it below the fold. This is usually the case for the often image heavy homepages. In that homepage, I mentioned above the text contained in the image only talks about a couple of broad important keywords.

I’ll suggest they add some new text lower on the home page to talk about some important services they offer and ideally link to pages for more information about each service.

10. Develop Alt Tags for the Image Links

Alt Tags for static images (images that are not used as links) are used to provide information about what is in the image for those who mouse over the image, those with slow speed connections, those who turn off image downloading, or for the visually impaired who use page readers.

Alt Tags for images that are used as links should provide additional information about what can be expected when someone clicks on the image link.

If you can develop keyword rich Alt Tags for image links this can help improve the rankings for both the page where they are embedded in and the page they link to (see below for more on internal linking).

11. Update The HTML Page Title Meta Description Tag

After I’ve developed all the suggestions for optimizing the content on the page, I work on the HTML Page Title and Meta Description Tag.

There are plenty of articles in Search Engine Land about crafting HTML Page Titles and Meta tags such as these:

• Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google Bing
• Google’s Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description

I will make a few points about these tags.

Check for CMS Issues with Tag Handling

Before spending your time crafting beautiful tags check to see if there are any issues with how these tags are generated on your website. There are often limitations with CMS systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

You may need to see if there are settings or plug-ins available to improve HTML Page title and description tag handling. Sometimes, you’ll need to develop your tags within limits constrained by the web development system.

Longer, Truncated Titles

I usually make titles longer than what the major search engines display, which is currently about 65 to 70 characters. However, I make sure the first 65 to 70 characters is crafted to do the best job of enticing people to click through from search listings.

I focus on 2-3 important keywords even if they are not all contained within the first 65 to 70 characters of the page title as the search engines likely index beyond what they display.

Title and Description Should Entice Searchers to Click

Remember that the purpose of Titles and Description tags is to tell people what the web site, site section/category, or the specific page is about. So craft Title and Description tags to work together to try to attract visitors scanning search results to click to your website.

Keywords in Both Title and Content

You’ll usually want to focus on 2-3 important keywords that are included in the visible, indexable content on the page within the Title. Again, the title and description tag should relate closely to the content on the page.

Plus, it will take the combination of the keyword in the page title and within the content on the page (along with other factors such as internal and external linking) to reach top rankings for competitive phrases.

12. Increase Internal / External Links   Social Engagement

Internal links from within the Web and even more so external links from other sites affect rankings. So I look for how we might increase the internal links to the page such as adding it to one or more of the navigation systems if appropriate, adding it to the HTML site map etc.

More importantly, I look for ways to add links to the page from within the main body of content on other pages, ideally those that are ranking well for other competitive phrases. This should help rankings. However, again remember that your human visitors come first: these links should be added only if they make sense for moving humans along to the page

For the Frame Sliders page, for example, the current product line is a closeout so maybe we can put text or image links on the home page and some other pages such as the following:

Frame Sliders Clearance

Up to 50% Off

I then look for ways to get social mentions and more external links pointing to this page or to pages one click away such as mentioning the topic in a press release or article with a link to an inner page, talking about the topic and pointing to a page in some social venues, etc. Frame sliders at 50% off could be mentioned in the client’s social media venues for example.

Make Sure The Recommendations Are Implemented Correctly

Finally, if you are not the person who implements the suggestions you developed make a point of checking them as soon as possible after they have been completed. Most of our suggestions are implemented either by a client’s IT department or their Web development company and it’s very rare that the suggestions are implemented correctly the first time.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Beginner | How To | How To: SEO | Keywords Content

Article source: http://searchengineland.com/12-steps-to-optimize-a-webpage-for-organic-keywords-108846

Campaign structure remains woefully undervalued. When you have the right campaign structure, Google will reward you with a better quality score. You’ll also be rewarded through improved downstream results.

Campaign structure optimization is critical. Let’s look at the three main areas you should focus on when creating the structure of your account.

Improve Your Relevancy

Search engines want to see tightly themed ad groups. This means that your keywords are all related, and they match your ad copy and landing page messages.

For example, if you’re selling motor oil, you would want to keep all your auto branded keywords in unique ad groups so you can write copy that aligns to that auto brand. The example below shows how the existing structure of an account might be re-mapped into tighter campaign structure.

What is the right number of keywords per ad group? Well, the number of keywords isn’t the correct metric to monitor.

Below is some performance data from retail clients that shows there isn’t a correlation between the number of keywords in an ad group to CTR, or quality score.

Focus on the downstream metrics, and how your structure can be improved from a customer experience standpoint versus the size of the ad group.

With SEO, if you write for the user, the rest will take care of itself. Here, if you build your campaign structure to be the most relevant to the user, the results will come.

Better Budget Control

One of the biggest reasons to create a new campaign is budget control. Since this is a campaign level control, you should leverage a new campaign when there is a specific budget control item to be addressed.

You need to be aware of a keyword’s percent of total spend per campaign. If any one keyword is eating up too much budget, and not allowing better performing keywords to get visibility, then that keyword should get its own group.

In some cases, consider giving a campaign to just one specific keyword if you want to be able to control the budget allocated to that keyword.

Alter Your Advanced Targeting Options

The last main theme that drives new campaigns is the ability to set advanced targeting options. These include mobile, geo, and day-parting targeting options.

All campaigns should be separated to uniquely target mobile and tablet campaigns differently than desktop. Another example might be targeting keywords to specific region. Maybe you only want to target your “swimsuit” keywords to Florida during the winter versus Minnesota.

When considering what campaigns to be set up, or when to break them out, try to think about what levers you’ll be able to use to optimize your campaigns, and how you can better take advantage of the data you get.

For example, impression share is a metric that allows you to better understand the opportunity for a given keyword set. If you want to better measure the opportunity of a unique keyword set, you might create a new ad group, or campaign so Google will provide the data back for just that keyword set.

Summary

Campaign structure should be living and breathing during the course of a campaign. You’ll never have it exactly right, and there is always room for improvement. Just consider how your business goals – and users – will be impacted with any campaign structure changes you make, and you’ll find yourself in a positive situation.

Register now for SES London 2012, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place 20-24 February, 2012. SES Conference Expo features presentations and panel discussions that cover all aspects of search engine-related promotion. Hurry, early bird rate expires February 3!

Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2142426/3-Keys-to-Optimizing-Your-PPC-Campaign-Structure

(Credit:
Matt Elliott)

The Foodspotting app, available for both iOS and Android platforms, lets you find good dishes in your area and share marvelous plates of food with others.

Foodspotting is like Foodily without the recipes. Or Instagram solely for meals of food. In fact, you can connect your Instagram account to Foodspotting, and Instagram photos tagged with #food or #foodspotting will show up in your Foodspotting feed. (Maybe I need to wait longer for the two to sync, but the Instagram photo I tagged with the #foodspotting tag has yet to show up in my Foodspotting feed.) The app lets you upload photos of dishes you feel are worth a mention. You can follow friends who are using the app, restaurants in your area, and specific foods such as burgers, fish tacos, or BBQ. You can also follow other sources, including celebrity chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, the Travel Channel, and various city guides.

To get started, you will need to sign up with an e-mail or via Facebook. The app will ask you to allow it to know your location; say yes and you’ll soon see photos of dishes in your area that other Foodspotting users have uploaded.

Five buttons run along the bottom of the screen:

1. The Browse button lets you view a swipeable belt of photos. On each photo, you’ll see the name of the dish, where it’s from, and the distance from your current location. Foodspotting must still be working out some kinks with GPS because it told me a dish called Onion Aloo Paratha from the Neel Giri Hotel in Dungarpur, Rajeshthan, India, is 1.3 miles from me. I’ve not been there, but I’m pretty sure it’s a bit farther than 1.3 miles from Concord, NH. Other international locations also show up in my Nearby feed. At the top of the Browse screen are three buttons to adjust your view: Nearby, Latest, and Best.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott)

You can nominate (“nom” in Foodspotting’s parlance) a dish that looks particularly appealing, and you can mark it as something you want or tell the author that it’s a Great Shot or a Great Find. Dishes that receive noms will get a blue ribbon affixed to their photo and will show up first when you are viewing the best dishes in your area. When viewing a dish, below the photo are links to the person who spotted the dish and the restaurant or establishment it’s from. Tap on person or location and you’ll see a Follow button, which you can tap to add that person or location to your feed.

2. The Find button lets you search by food, restaurant, or location. Below the search bar are two options for filtering the Browse screen. You can view just the photos that your followers have uploaded or view only the dishes for which you’ve expressed a desire to want. If you search by keyboards, you’ll be returned to the Browse screen with that keyword replacing “See what’s nearby.” You can tap the X next to your search term on the Browse screen to remove the filter.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott)

3. Like Instagram, the middle button takes you to the camera function. Instead of being labeled Share, it’s labeled Spot. You can either snap a picture or grab one from your camera roll. After snapping or selecting a photo, you can resize it a bit and then Foodspotting will ask, Where did you find it? and What is it? and What did you think?

4. With the Guides button, you can view various food guides from cities near you. I saw general guides such as Zagat’s Most popular restaurants in Boston and GrubHub’s New York’s Top 25 Delivery Restaurants and more specific guides such as the Ultimate Trail of Nachos in NYC and neighborhood guides such as the Top 10 Dishes in Queens. You can view these lists from the Guides screen, and you can follow guides so any future activity they make on Foodspotting will show up in your feed.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott)

5. Tap the Follow button to build your feed. You can follow people, places, and foods. The app will search Facebook, Twitter, and your
iPhone contacts for friends using Foodspotting. Below these options is your feed.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott)

From here, you can also access your account settings to set up or restrict e-mail and push notifications. To configure e-mail or to connect Foodspotting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, or Instagram, follow this path: Profile Account Settings. One thing you can’t do in settings is upload a profile picture; you’ll need to head to Foodspotting.com for such customization.

The Foodspotting app will improve as it gains users. Right now, I don’t think I’ll use it much in my small hamlet of Concord, NH. Denizens of larger metropolitan areas, however, might have better luck.

Article source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57368471-285/how-to-share-and-find-good-food-with-the-foodspotting-app/

Ah, metadata and taxonomies: what’s not to love? Ask your content creators and you’ll be told loud and clear: having to apply said metadata and taxonomies to content through tagging.

Although rich and consistent indexing makes content more findable and easier to evaluate, nobody relishes the idea of tagging multiple fields, and it can take considerable effort to make it happen. The struggle is always to keep up with the ever-increasing flow of content. And even if you have a team of indexers, you still have issues of indexing consistency and scalability. One solution is to turn to auto-classification.

Auto-Classification Systems

Taxonomies and thesauri are the foundation of an auto-classifier. They provide the vocabulary against which rules are built and “teach” the machine how to “understand” and categorize content. Most systems require a rich thesaurus to function.

There are two broad types of auto-classification: statistical and rules-based.

Rules-based

Rules-based systems rely on simple Boolean (and, or, not) categorization rules to find either positive or negative evidence of a match to a category. For example, rules for content about astronomy care specifically that the keyword “Mercury” is matched but NOT in proximity to the words “car” or “chemical.”

The success of rules-based systems is heavily dependent on the richness of the taxonomy and collection of synonyms/keywords associated to each category. Weighting can be used to adjust how the system interprets the relevancy of a specific keyword to a specific category.

The challenge is in creating and/or tweaking the rules for each category and keyword combination — which can be onerous for large taxonomies. There are, however, many tools that auto-create a set based on your taxonomy that you could then edit.

Statistical

Statistical systems use word frequency and location to determine important or useful concepts. You have to train a statistical system using a representative sample set of documents (usually 50+) for each concept in your taxonomy. You feed it some example texts that you would classify in that category, and it analyzes the text to extract statistically significant keywords and patterns. In the Mercury example, the system would deduce that content about mercury the chemical should not be classified because none of the training documents mentioned chemicals.

This method can be challenging for a few reasons: it requires a lot of effort to create the training set, it relies on the availability of keyword-rich text, and when there is a problem with the classification results, it can be tricky to identify the source.

Auto-Classification Taxonomy Management Tools

Auto-classification (or auto-indexing) is often found within larger toolsets, such as document management systems and search engines (e.g. Fast, Endeca, Exalead, etc). However, these often only allow you to import a taxonomy and apply it to the content. You cannot manage your taxonomy in these systems, so you end up needing a second tool for vocabulary management.

Many of the popular taxonomy management suites include auto-classification modules. This allows you to combine the management of the categories and keywords/synonyms against which you’ll be classifying and the associated rules or training sets. With few exceptions, taxonomy tools with auto-classifiers are generally rules-based systems. They automatically create a set of rules based on the taxonomy stored within, creating new rules each time a new term is added or changed in the vocabulary. This reduces the effort in rule-based management.

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Article source: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/autoclassification-friend-or-foe-of-taxonomy-management-014222.php

by Kristin Burnham,
CIO  

Facebook announced last week that Timeline—its redesigned profile page—is becoming mandatory for all users. If you don’t switch to Timeline on your own, Facebook will do so for you within “the next few weeks.”

• 
  Five Facebook Timeline changes you can’t wait to make
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  Master Facebook’s Timeline with this handy guide
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  Facebook Timeline: Important privacy settings to adjust now
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  Facebook’s new Timeline layout: A getting-started guide
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  Getting started with Facebook Timeline
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  Control what you share on Facebook Timeline

Facebook has been rolling out Timeline slowly since December, after first introducing it at its F8 developer conference in September. The project is one of Facebook’s most ambitious and significant redesigns to date, as it seeks to become your digital scrapbook with the capability to document your life from birth to present day, and revisit old posts more easily.

While not everyone is on board with Timeline, the switch is inevitable. Here’s our complete guide to Facebook Timeline, from making the switch to adjusting your privacy settings, in order to make the transition easier.

Getting Started: Facebook Timeline basics

To switch your profile to Timeline on your own, visit facebook.com/timeline and click the “Get It Now” button.

After you make the switch, Facebook will immediately send you to your new Timeline page. At this point, only you can see your new Timeline—all your Facebook friends will still see your old profile design.

From the day you choose to up update to Timeline (or from the day that Facebook switches you), you’ll have one week to make any changes you want—including deleting old posts, adding life events and more—before your new profile goes live for your friends to see. Or, if you’re ready to debut Timeline before the one-week period, you can click “Publish Now” to push it live.

Facebook’s Timeline feature will soon be mandatory for all users of the social networking service.

New features

There are a number of new features and components that you’ll discover once you switch to Timeline. Here are a few of the important ones:

Inline privacy controls: When you update your status, you’ll notice a drop-down menu that shows exactly who you’re sharing a post with: Public, Friends, Only Me or Custom. When you change this setting, it will stay how you set it for future posts until you change it again. You can also designate a status for certain lists.

Navigating Timeline: There are two easy ways you can revisit your past posts. First, you can choose a year by clicking it on the Timeline slider on the right side of your screen, then drill down by month. Or, you can start by clicking the option beside your name and next to the “Update Info,” called “Activity Log.”

Within your Activity Log you can sort your past posts by everything from only items you’ve posted, posts by others, comments, notes, likes, info updates and more. This comes in handy when you’re deciding what you want to keep on your Timeline. (For more on this, see the next section on privacy.)

Adding “Life Events”: Just above your inline privacy controls is a new option—“Life Event.” Just as you can share a status or photo with your friends, you can also fill in your Timeline by highlighting events from your past, such as previous jobs, family and relationships, location moves, travel and more.

After you choose a category to update, you’ll be brought to a form to fill in the details: the location, who you were with, the date, a backstory, photos and a privacy setting for who can see this life event.

Highlight what matters: As part of Timeline’s more visual interface, you’re able to denote which posts deserve more prominence and which are less important, which is reflected in the size of the post.

For example, if you want to highlight a new photo album of a vacation that you just updated, hover over the item and click the star icon. This will turn this item into a “featured post,” which means it’s more prominently displayed.

Similarly, if you want to hide a particular post from your Timeline—but not delete it entirely—hover over the post and click the pencil icon.

How to adjust your privacy settings

When you (or Facebook) migrates your account to the new Timeline, you’ll have one week to make adjustments to your past posts and privacy settings before your Timeline will go live for everyone to see. You can publish your Timeline yourself anytime within the seven-day waiting period.

It’s important to note that Facebook does not change the privacy settings of your old posts; it retains the privacy settings from when you originally posted it. That means that while today you may limit wall posts to just your “Limited Profile” list, posts from years ago could be “Friends only” or even public since the Limited Profile option did not exist at the time.

You have a few options when it comes to pruning old posts:

Make all posts friends-only: It’s possible that your past posts have varied privacy settings based on when they were posted. One way—the easiest of them all—is to use one of the blanket privacy settings: “Limit the Audience for past Posts.” You’ll find this option near the bottom of your Privacy Settings page.

If you decide to use this option, the content on your Timeline that you’ve shared with more than your friends—such as public posts—will automatically change to Friends only. With this setting, though, people who are tagged and their friends will still be able to see the post.

Limit the posts by others on your Timeline: Another way to hide past posts is to limit specific people or lists of people from viewing what others have posted to your wall. To do this, go to your Privacy Settings page, then select “Edit Settings” next to “How You Connect.” Select the drop-down menu next to the last item—“Who can see posts by others on your timeline?” and choose “Custom.”

In the box under “Hide this from,” type the names of the people or the lists that you want to exclude from viewing posts from others on your wall—for example those on your Limited Profile list. Then click Save Changes.

Use “Activity Log” to edit posts manually: On your Timeline, click the “Activity Log” button that appears under your Cover Photo (the large landscape picture). From here, you can use the drop-down menu in the top-right that says “All” to drill down to every type of post or event that has appeared on your wall.

From this view, you can see who currently can see a particular item by clicking on the gear icon next to the post. You can also click the circle icon next to that to either “star” it on Timeline, hide it from Timeline, delete the post entirely or change the date.

Beware of scams

If you’re not a fan of Facebook’s new Timeline, you’re not alone. In a CIO.com poll of more than 800 people, 88 percent responded that they dislike the new profile design. Unfortunately for them—and contrary to Facebook Pages and Groups popping up—there’s no hitting the rewind button to revert to the old profile.

These pages, which you can find easily by searching Facebook for the keyword “Timeline,” have attracted tens of thousands of people. They are generally entitled “Deactivate Facebook Timeline on your Profile” or “Deactivate Your FB Timeline” and are found under app, public figure, community, cause, website and organization categories.

They also have a number of characteristics in common: Most request that you “Like” its page before it reveals how to receive your old profile design, then it instructs you to click a cluster of “Like” buttons and a “Share” button; select a state or country; and choose friends to invite to the application or group.

Security experts suggest that you steer clear of these bogus pages. Generally, Facebook’s official Facebook page and its official security page are two good resources to check if you’re unsure about whether or not a page or meme is legitimate. On these pages, Facebook will post information about new security features, tips and rumors.

Facebook Timeline and the new apps

Along with Facebook’s announcement of Timeline in September, it also introduced a “new class of apps” that go hand-in-hand with Timeline. Last week, Facebook officially launched more than 60 of these new applications.

While Facebook hopes that these new apps will keep you on its site longer, you can expect another change, too: a lot more noise in your Ticker and News Feed,as well as an influx of over-sharing. To avoid this, there are a few things you can do.

Choose your settings before you download: Below the app summary information when you first choose to download an app is an option: “Who can see activity from this app on Facebook.” How you’ve set your default privacy settings—either public, friends or a custom setting—that will determine the automatic setting for all your applications, unless you change it.

If you’re interested in using an application but don’t want your activity broadcast to your friends’ News Feeds and Tickers, choose the “Only Me” option. While your activity will appear on your Timeline, no one else will be able to see it.

Adjust settings after downloading: If you’re not sure what your app preferences are or you want to adjust them, you can review them one by one from within your Privacy Settings page.

From the drop-down menu in the top-right of your screen, select “Privacy Settings” then choose “Edit Settings” next to “Apps and Websites.” On the apps privacy page, click “Edit Settings” next to “Apps you use”—this will show you all the apps that you have downloaded, and the privacy and permissions associated with them.

Here, you can remove the app if you no longer want it connected to your account. You can also preview what permissions the app has and remove certain ones (some are mandatory, which you cannot remove). The last option, “App activity privacy” will tell you who can see posts and activity from this app. If you don’t want Facebook to share your activity, change this option to “Only Me.”

Know how your friends share your activity: Your friends and other people you share information with can also share your activity with apps they use.

To prevent your friends from sharing your app activity with others on Facebook, go to “Privacy Settings,” choose “Edit Settings” next to “Apps and Websites” then “How people bring your info to apps they use.” Here, make sure the box next to “My app activity” is unchecked.

[Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and enterprise collaboration for CIO.com.]

Article source: http://www.macworld.com/article/164999/2012/01/your_complete_guide_to_facebook_timeline.html

Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com

Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.

As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, MA and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.

Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong

We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).

Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.

Basic Overview of the Lateral Hiring Market in Asia

We are fortunate to meet regularly in-person with senior US corporate and cap markets partners in HK / China, especially when Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney are visiting our Hong Kong office. Evan and Robert are friends with many key US partners in HK / China and the region and have at least close business relations with most key US partners in HK / China and Singapore. It is, in large part, through such in-person meetings during their many trips to HK (usually 6 such trips a year for Evan and 4-5 for Robert) and also other Asia markets, that we get a great read on the market and what US partners are thinking about the near-term and long-term prospects for their deal flow. We are very fortunate that such senior partners go out of their way to make time to meet Robert and Evan when they are in town. Further, we have Alexis Lamb permanently on the ground in HK having such meetings and Asia based partners also meet in the US with Evan and Robert when they are visiting there. Yuliya Vinokurova, our Russia-based recruiter, also works out of our Hong Kong office from time to time.

During Evan and Robert’s last three recent trips to HK, occurring from August to December ’11, the outlook of most of the US corporate partners they regularly meet with in HK improved substantially. While lateral US corporate associate hiring has not picked up yet in HK / China, the outlook for future deal flow has improved over the situation only a few months ago.

The general feeling in the market from most US corporate associates that we are speaking to these days is that hiring is very slow in Asia and will be for a long while, but the reality is not nearly as dire as this common view. While US associate lateral hiring has indeed slowed down significantly in the Asia markets, the slow-down has mainly been in US cap markets, but not necessarily in other practice areas. Cap markets hiring, especially at the top US firms, has always been the key driver for US associate hiring in Asia. Thus, when hiring in US cap markets is down, the entire lateral hiring market for US associates in Asia is significantly down.

US Cap Markets hiring in HK / China has not stopped entirely though. For example, in the past three weeks, we have made two US cap markets associate placements in HK, at a top US firm and a Magic Circle firm. We predict that US cap markets hiring in HK / China will not pick up that much until spring though and we don’t expect a repeat of the early ’11 US cap markets hiring boom in HK / China for years to come.

Keep in mind that in the first half of ’11, we were in the tail end of a two year IPO boom in HK / China and for most of that boom period, many top US firms’ HK / China offices were either on hiring freeze or only allowed limited hiring by their global firm management. By the end of ’10, most US practices in HK / China were finally given the full green light to hire as many associates as the partners’ on the ground felt they needed, but by that time most US cap markets practices in HK / China were woefully understaffed. Thus, the unprecedented hiring boom commenced.

As you know, late summer ’11 onwards brought on a slow down in IPO activity in HK / China. The slow down was caused mainly by volatility in the global markets, due in large part to the Europe crisis. Many clients of top US cap markets practices in Asia decided to put scheduled IPOs on hold. At the height of the Europe crisis and the volatility in the markets last fall, there was a realistic fear that many IPOs could be put on hold for a year or more. Despite the gloomy outlook at the time, it was a much more healthy market than in late ’08, when pencils were basically put down at cap markets practices in Asia. Late last year, cap markets practices in HK / China were still working on deals scheduled for closing in 4th quarter, but the expectation was that most of those deals would ultimately be put on hold, perhaps long-term. Things picked up in the markets late last year and some law firms’ clients pushed through their IPO 4th quarter closings after all. Most importantly, the feeling in the market is now that IPOs put on hold late last year and 1st quarter this year could come back in first half ’12, instead of in late ’12 or ’13.

Of course, there are many variables at play in the global markets that will determine things (our brief overview here is overly simplistic due to this being a blog post, rather than a dissertation), and there are surely economic challenges that China must overcome in ’12, but the outlook has improved substantially in the past 3 months. The Europe crisis has been put on hold, at least for a while, and the threat of a significant slow down in China’s economy has not materialized. Economists are now predicting China’s sizzling growth will slow some in ’12,and will still be at boom levels of around 8.5%. The predictions were far more dire several months ago by some economists, who were predicting a “hard landing” for China’s economy in ‘12.

China’s growth rate in ’11 was 9.2%, down from the 10.4% in ’10. The outlook for the first three months of ’12 is expected to be around 8.3%, but then pick up afterwards for the remainder of ’12. China’s growth in the 4th quarter ’11 slowed to 8.9%, a much smaller decline than what was expected.

We believe that starting after the extended holiday season of late December through an earlier than usual Chinese New Year presently upon us, a few more US cap markets practices in Asia will consider hiring again. It will likely be no earlier than spring though before we see a real increase in cap markets lateral associate hiring though.

We expect to continue to make placements in other practice areas though during 1st and 2nd quarters, especially as many US law firms in Asia continue to diversify and add new practices. While cap markets placements have been down, we have had higher than usual numbers of placements in Asia in fund formation, project finance and in new US litigation practices (mostly FCPA work). Our partner friends in fund
formation are flat-out busy for the most part. MA placement numbers have been down a bit, but in better shape than cap markets.

IPO activity still is the driver for a lot of the US associate hiring though in Asia and when cap markets work slows, it can be difficult for partners busy in other practices in Asia to get clearance to make the hires they need. Firm management back in US or UK can be heavily influenced by the overall numbers of an Asia office, numbers driven by cap markets deal flow at many of those offices, when deciding whether to give the green light on hires in general.

Also, keep in mind that during slow hiring periods like this one, there is an abundance of very high quality cap markets and corporate US associate candidates on the market in Asia. When a hiring partner is unsure he should pull the trigger on new hires just yet and he has seven great resumes on his desk, it is much easier to hold off. Hiring decisions are rushed, on the other hand, when Asian background candidates from top 10 firms become scarce and that can happen very quickly in an obviously improving market. It could happen in spring or summer this year, if the markets continue to improve.

Article source: http://abovethelaw.com/2012/01/quote-of-the-day-keyword-searching-youre-doing-it-wrong/

Local business marketers often hyper-focus on Google search rankings, but it’s important not to forget that even if Bing and Yahoo! do not have the lion’s share, even 15% of search volume can create a sizable number of potential business referrals. So, here are a few basic tips for optimizing for Bing Local search rankings.

Optimization of business profiles in the Bing Business Portal (or “BBP”) is not difficult nor time-consuming. Microsoft’s newish Beta interfacing for administrating business listing details is actually pretty slick and easy to use.

10 Tips For Optimizing Local Business Listings In Bing

 

1.  The first key is to claim your business listing

As with other local search engines, having a business owner claim a listing helps to validate the information and establish that the business is active, helping increase “trust ranking” factors.

One of the hardest issues for local search engines and online directories to handle is figuring out which businesses have expired so that they can remove their listings from the databases — so, they have a horror of displaying stale listings to consumers. It’s reasonable to think that businesses which have some signal indicating they’re active will be more likely to be presented more prominently to searchers.

2.  Correct and standardize your basic business contact information

The core contact information needs to be consistently shown in all major places including in Bing Local. The basic contact data is the business Name, Address, and Phone # (a.k.a. “N.A.P.”) — along with the website URL.

3.  Add an image to your listing! 

One striking characteristic of Bing Local searches is how higher-ranking businesses appear to more frequently have images associated with their listings! (See also my earlier articles on optimizing images for local search here and here.) Could be that listings that have images are claimed, and rank higher due to that status, or it could be directly related to the presence of the thumbnails.

Either way, businesses that have pics may have greater chance of ranking well in Bing Local. Example – top two listings for a search for “intellectual property attorneys, chicago, il”:

4.  Set your hours of operation!

Bing Local business profiles actually include a small  sign icon. While I haven’t tested this, I wouldn’t be surprised if businesses might be a little more likely to rank better during times when they list themselves as being open, particularly in mobile search.

Even if it isn’t a direct ranking signal, however, the fact that the profile page gets the bright, attention-getting icon makes it worthwhile as a possibly conversion-increasing element!

5.  Check your categories, and add more where possible!

Business categories like “Plumbers”, “Florists”, and “Attorneys” are core elements involved in local search rankings, yet they can often be wrong or so minimally specified as to detract from the promotion potential that business listings would otherwise possess.

When a local search keyword matches a business’s category — either partially as a “fuzzy match” or as a thesaurus match — the listing is far more likely to rank for it.

6. Go a step beyond categories 

Bing appears to treat “Specialities” similarly to categories or like subcategories, so add relevant specialties.

7. For restaurants, integrate with OpenTable

Integrating with OpenTable to handle reservation scheduling will enable a convenient ”reservations” link to appear on the profile page in Bing.

8.  Add deals to your listing!

Bing appears to have also integrated with Groupon, so if you have a Groupon offer going on, it could appear with your local listing in Bing, too. But, Bing Group Deals may be set up directly within the BBP as well.

9.  Develop citations!

Just as with Google Place Search and Google Maps, Bing Local listings need to have citations and inlinks in order to rank well. Local citation sources which may be influential in Bing include YP.com, Superpages.com, Yahoo! Local, Manta, Judy’s Book, and more. Vertical directories also likely work well here, too, such as Restaurants.com, FindLaw.com, Dentists.com, Contractors.com, etc.

10.  Optimize your local business website

Having a well-optimized local biz website helps all of your external optimizations work hand-in-hand with the on-site optimization. Businesses with good website optimization have a better chance of ranking well and getting found by consumers seeking their products and services.

Bing and other search engines compare listing information against the information found on the website, so keeping the listing data and “N.A.P.” consistent helps reinforce and validate the vital local search criteria.

These basic local optimization tips are pretty obvious to any experienced local marketer, but it’s always amazing how many local businesses fail to check their listings for correctness, consistency and areas where information may be expanded or enhanced.

Sites which follow these simple tips often get an edge over their competition — and, in internet marketing the “early worm” which grabs marketshare first often gets an advantage that extends well into the future. For more details around optimizing local directory profiles, see my earlier article, Anatomy Optimization Of A Local Business Profile.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Local Search | Microsoft: Bing Maps Local

Article source: http://searchengineland.com/10-basic-bing-local-optimization-tips-109158