Google is in the beta testing stages of what they are calling “sponsored map icons” which will appear on Google Maps. These icons will show specific brand icons on the maps instead of just the generic ones and as of right now this new feature is starting with HSBC, Target, Bank of America, and Public Storage. After beginning to test this feature back in March on the Australian version of Google Maps ( as reported by Search Engine Land ), American advertisers caught wind the company decided to begin testing here in the U.S

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Testing of Google Maps’ “Sponsored Icons” Comes to the U.S.

These on-page search engine optimization tips will assist you in setting up your pages with the appropriate title and meta tags, headers, text elements and alt attributes. 1.

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6 Ultimate On-Page Search Engine Optimization Tips

Grant Crowell interviews Josh Miller of 3PlayMedia, to talk about Congress’ recent passing of two bills that will mandate closed-captioning of television programming over to the Internet. We discuss the questions: Will other “professional” online video programs be next? And, is legislation necessary, or will organizations determine that transcription and captioning of video content has a worthwhile ROI regardless of any mandate

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Should Closed-Captioning Of Web Video Be Mandated By Government?

While it is often regarded as the lingua franca of the internet, English is not quite the dominant online force many imagine it to be. It is still the single most widely used online language, according to Internet World Stats , but Chinese is now running a close second – and three-quarters of all web surfers speak a native language other than English.

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The Three Step Process to Effective Multilingual Keywords

ReelSEO publisher Mark Robertson was a featured speaker this past week at the 2010 Video Commerce Summit held Seattle, Washington.

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Video SEO And PPC Strategies For E-Commerce Video Online

For a moon or two now, there has been this debate about whether link-builders are, in actual fact, SEO’s or whether they should sit in a different realm – sitting more closely with business development or PR.  Much of what link-builders do, after all, is relationship focussed, prospecting and of course results driven – this to me sounds very much like a salesmanship.  But it’s more than that – it’s the full plethora of what true SEO can deliver for a business. Now, I think in many respects, competent link-builders are the most all-rounded SEO’s in the sector (not simply salesy folk at all), with skills to not only develop campaigns to build a website’s authority and trust through relationships and activity, but also to understand key marketing principles at the root of all SEO activity, or the potential a relationship with a site owner might be worth.  Now, a couple of guys in my team might laugh when they read that as they’ll remember a horrible acronym that I’ve used in training materials: RAMRAT.  In my opinion, everything in SEO should consider ROI, Accessibility, Marketability, Relevancy, Authority and Trust.  I also suggested another couple of acronyms too, but they didn’t sound so ridiculous so didn’t stick with the team… The idea is that each of these items should be considered in light of what both robots and humans perceive.  Let’s take how they might be perceived by humans and search engines: ROI : well if you do everything else in this list to full effect, then there certainly should be return on investment in that there is great authority, trust and relevancy attributed to the website you’re working on. Accessibility: a link should be crawlable by robots and findable and clickable by humans meandering through the web

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Homage to the Business of Link-Building

A few weeks back, I eluded to the notion that YouTube and Google are indexing YouTube’s closed captions and subtitles. In fact, YES – both Google and YouTube ARE indexing videos for text that is contained within closed captions and subtitles

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In-Depth Look At YouTube Closed Captions, SEO and Indexing