These are the questions on everyone's mind. What is BING? How will it affect my SEO strategy? What does this mean to all of the hard work I have put into my content and optimization?

Here are some of the guidelines we have seen pop up so far with regard to Bing and how it categorizes search listings. 

First of all, there is much talk that Bing, as an engine, is smarter or "more aware" than Google bots are. (Oh my God, this is it. The robots have become self-aware. This is my ultimate nightmare.)

Bing appears to not only "find" your content, but it makes intelligent decisions regarding what your content is, which are driven by a slightly different set of rules than Google uses. (Be aware that this is speculation. I have no hard facts or proof.)

Bing appears to weigh the "age" of a domain more heavily. The longer you have been around, the more street cred you carry as a website.

Bing likes content. But not just some content, loads of content. Bing appears to respond better to pages with at least 300 words of text or more.

Google has not placed as much weight on bloggers in the past. It is said that Bing is a friend of bloggers and may weigh blogs quite heavily.

Bing appears to like great titles that are directly relevant to your content. So don't phone in your titles, you lazy shlub.

Keep your URL's simple. Bing hasn't got time to read your URL manifestos. He is a busy guy with places to be.

Lastly, Bing likes outbound links, contrary to Google that has, in the past, prevented websites from posting too many outbound links out of fear of lowering their rank.

Make sure your website allows MSNbots to crawl your content. If you don't know how to do this, go find your IT guy. Those guys are magical.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Google has begun running relevant text ads on Google News, a practice the search giant avoided for nearly six years.

So why is this news? Because initially, newspaper publishers were weary of Google’s news aggregator (a service that collected headlines and clips of major – and minor – newspapers, linking users to the online story’s respective site), thinking that Google was essentially building a competing news site using the newspaper’s existing content. To help ease publishers’ fears that Google was stealing money from the newspapers, big G refrained from placing ads on Google News search results.

And that just changed, owing to what Google claims, via the New York Times, was an approach that delivered contextually relevant ads. I’m guessing they also thought it would turn a profit.

Google long maintained that its use of headline and snippets were in accordance with fair use copyright laws. Do they undercut that claim once they start making money through their “fair use” of the content? Will they share a piece of the profit with the ailing newspaper industry? After all, Google depends on a thriving newspaper industry to keep Google News viable.

That all leads to the confounding and circular chicken/egg logic behind the issue. To be a success, Google News needs fresh content from newspapers that in turn need pageviews via aggregators like Google News because no one is buying the print product that ultimately feeds the beast.

The fact is that both Google and the news industry is trying to make money off of something the news industry is giving away for free. Only now, Google may have figured out a way to do it.

CNET’s News.com is reporting that New York City high-society rumormongers Cityfile today announced the gradual acquisition of domain names matching some of the movers and shakers it covers. Cityfile distinguishes itself from other gossip rags by exposing NYC’s powerful, behind-the-scenes business and media elite, making their run on domains a minimal investment.

Here is where it gets interesting: Instead of squatting on the site, preying on the insecurities of image conscious billionaires, and awaiting a selling opportunity, Cityfile is redirecting the URLs to Cityfile profile pages of the subject, presumably has a part of their SEO strategy.

And just to be jerks, in their announcement, Cityfile rubbed everyone’s noses in it:

Given the lengths to which prominent New Yorkers go to control their public profiles, you'd think they would have purchased their domain names by now. It's a $4 investment, which we're pretty sure billionaires like Jonathan Tisch, Steve Feinberg or Edgar Bronfman, Jr. can afford, even if this is the greatest depression ever.

Hey everyone - long time no see. It's been awhile since my last post, but something so monumental occurred in the search world yesterday that I had to come out of hiding and share this news with those who may or may not be aware. Yesterday, Google officially launched its new SearchWiki feaure available to those who have a Google account. In a nutshell, Google's SearchWiki allows users like you and me to edit search results. You can re-order, remove, or add web pages to the search results for any query and even more interesting, you can also add notes to specific listings. I could go on and explain more about how it works exactly but for that, take a look at this article; they've already done it.

Now I know this has nothing to do with writing or keywords or anything that we normally discuss really on this blog, but for anyone who uses Google when searching for stuff (everyone), or for those SEO's out there, this is really, really big news. I was playing around with this new user interface today and I must say, it's pretty cool. I'm curious as to what everyone else out there thinks about it, or if you have even noticed it. I personally think it has huge implications for SEO, not so much in terms of rankings at the moment, but users will be able to see all of the notes other searchers have made about a page or a site, and they will also be able to see what results other users have re-ordered, removed, or added. Google's product manager, Cedric Dupont, added that he "wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that user data from SearchWiki may someday impact regular search rankings." This too, would have huge implications on the SEO world because, as of now, rankings are more objective, decided upon by the many factors in the search engine's algorithms. This would bring a much more subjective element to it. Very interesting stuff..........

Remember, you have to have a Google account and you also must be signed in to be able to use SearchWiki. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Hi Everybody! In her most recent blog post, Carolyn mentioned that there were a few new hires in the production department here at Lifetips. Well, to all of you faithful Lifetips blog readers, I happen to be one of them and I just wanted to quickly introduce myself to you all. My name is Jesse DaCosta and I was just recently hired as the SEO Specialist at Lifetips. I've actually been here for three weeks now today (time flies!), learning the ropes and getting myself acclimated to everything that goes on here and my role within it.

I'm extremely excited to be here and to share my experience in the SEO / SEM world with them, and with all of you. I'll be sharing my thoughts and experiences on SEO (along with all things Web Marketing like analytics and such) here and hope that you, our readers, will share your knowledge and comments as well. Nothing beats a good, solid discussion, especially in the SEO world where everything changes so fast and everyone has their own tactics and techniques.

So stay tuned.........!!

What does “separation of church and state” mean? Get ready for a new twist. At LifeTips, the phrase means keeping promotional product copy “tips” separate from informational/advice-oriented tips. We present the informational tip first, followed by the product tip—labeled just so: “Product Tip”—in italics. The label and the italics show that we are honest about our promotion and not trying to sneak it into regular tips.

So why bother with the separation? Good question. Honesty, for one. People browsing your Tip & Advice Center are likely there because they want information, advice, answers, knowledge, tips. They want to learn something new, not have your products shoved down their throat in the form of marketing copy overload.

The more you can give people what they want in the form of valuable information, the more likely they are to post links back to your website, bookmark you, and consider you an authority in your space. Search engine spider bots will love this as much as your readers love your organic content, catapulting your website to higher search rankings. And guess what? When people trust you they are more likely to buy your products. All they have to do is click on the link in your Product Tip and take out their credit card.

Information/trust + higher search engine rankings = more conversions.  That’s a concept our forefathers would be proud of.