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.

LifeTips is proud to announce that our LifeTips Book Series will now be featured in stores soon! Up until now, we have offered our 40+ titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and LifeTips websites, however, due to increasing demand, we will now be offering our books for in-store purchase through various retailers. We are currently offering our books through Porter Square Books in Somerville, MA and Book Review in Huntington, NY. And our list of participating bookstores is growing by the day.

Congratulations to our most recently published authors on their latest book sales!

101 English Garden Tips by Sheri Ann Richerson

101 Author Tips to Creating a Successful Book Campaign by PJ Campbell

and

101 Tips on Healthy Eating, Naturally by Emily Davidson

Stay tuned for more book updates as Holly and Amanda take the book publishing world by storm!

We also encourage you to send all book proposals to Holly@LifeTips.com and Amanda@LifeTips.com.

For any Site Gurus, authors or those interested in either of these programs, Amanda Smyth and Carolyn McKibbin hosted the Monthly Writer's Call for May. The mp3 recording of the call is available on your main guru page after you've signed in. You will see listed on the left hand side of the page "mp3 Recordings," and for anyone who missed the call, you can listen to the recording here.

We covered topics ranging from "What the Site Guru Program is" to "how the Book Department is changing for the better." We also covered many FAQ's such as "How do I track my Chitika payments" and  "how does the Site Guru Program benefit me?"

If you have any further questions about the Site Guru Program or the Book Department, you can email me at Amanda@LifeTips.com or for technical book publishing questions, you can email Holly Bauer at Holly@LifeTips.com.

And don't forget to follow us on Twitter for job posting updates!

Amanda is LifeTipsEditor

Holly is LifeTipsBooks

Carolyn is LifeTipsLady

Please join us on Twitter for hourly LifeTips updates!

Byron is available on Twitter as ByronWhite

Amanda is available for editorial, radio and job posting updates as LifeTipsEditor

and our new Director of Marketing, John Cass, is available for networking as JohnCass.

Join us! Follow us! Let's Tweet!

Dear Gurus,

You are all a wonderful and incredibly valuable part of the LifeTips community and as usual, we always encourage you to go out and spread the word about your sites, your blogs and your talent. 

On that note, I will say that I do Twitter. I am a twitterer. I tweet.  I am also an only child, so I often enjoy tweeting about how awesome and great I find myself. It's an only child thing. I encourage you to tweet about the same (Not about me! Tweet about yourselves, your experience, why you enjoy working with LifeTips and why, in general, you rule.)

But I do caution you my darlings, be very careful about tweeting about current projects and clients you are working for. 

LifeTips works very hard to protect the privacy of our clients. We do not release names or information about clients unless we get permission to do so. And to allow our gurus to tweet about clients they are working with through us would be a liability on our shoulders. We just recieved this request from one client with regard to fidning a tweet about themselves from a guru. And while the client is not mad or upset in the least, this is a matter of importance that we need to be aware of.

"Going forward, if any of the writers would like to discuss working with LifeTips, that is fine, but they probably should not mention us (the client) by name as this could give the impression that they are, in fact, an employee of ours (the client). And in that case, anything they say online about us could conceivably be associated with us. Our legal team and PR department are very fussy about that."

So I leave you with this, my fellow Twitterers. PLEASE be careful about your tweets, but tweet on! 

Click here for a great review from one of our favorite writers, Mary White! Scroll down to page 26 for the full review, plus an excerpt from yours truly. So as Mary put it, "We're now famous in Lower Alabama." Don't worry, Mary. It's really only a matter of time before we take upper Alabama by storm.

Kudos to our wonderful gurus who took on our challenge to produce amazing books with our book publishing department! We've had some really great book submissions and we are proud to have our new publisher, Holly, on board with us to help get these great books out the door and onto book shelves across the country. 

Some upcoming books to look forward to:

101 Tips on Healthy Eating, Naturally by Emily Davidson

101 Tips on Becoming a Successful Book Author by PJ Campbell (irony is fun...)

101 Tips on Traveling to Mexico City by Kena Sosa

101 Tips on English Gardening by Sheri Ann Richarson

101 Tips on Business Writing by Suzan St. Maur

101 Tips on Youth Coaching by Jim Frey

101 Tips on Human Resources Management by Mary White

Do you want to make our list of "great upcoming books?" Send in your submissions now (a few paragraphs and a brief outline of your proposed book). You can send them along to Amanda@LifeTips.com or Holly@LifeTips.com.

Many of our gurus may have been wondering...

Why haven't we had a writer's call in awhile?

Why hasn't Mandy blogged in several weeks?

Where is LifeTips headed this year?

What's going on with WriterAccess?

Why is it illegal to rip the tag off of my mattress? 

Well gurus, we haven't fotgotten you. I'm still here, answering your emails, questions and concerns every day. I'm so proud of the 75 Site Gurus we have brought on board who have all stepped up and have taken over specific sites on the LifeTips site. Your expertise, daily blogs and new tips are breathing new life into our website. 

After a busy few months of trade shows and new product launches, Byron White is back with a vengeance. He's got loads of new technology and toys to show off, and this year, look for more writers calls, helpful videos and opportunities to come "Party with LifeTips."

Why hasn't Mandy blogged in a few weeks? Well, Mandy's been swamped with all of these great new ideas for fun ways to excite and ignite the Lifetips community. And also, sometimes she's just plain lazy about blogging. (Shameful. I know.)

We are all so excited about the direction that LifeTips is taking in the coming year. We are looking for great new books to publish for our gurus. We are looking for great new writers to join us at LifeTips and WriterAccess. We are looking for go-getters to take over sites as leading site gurus. We are looking for the new faces of LifeTips.

So stay tuned and hold on tight as we throw this puppy into high gear for the coming year.

Thanks to all of our hard working gurus who have put in weeks and months worth of work this year to make our pool of writers one of the best on the web.

Thanks to all of our wonderful clients who were a joy to work with and who helped our work days go by smoothly and efficiently.

Thanks to all of the wonderful Sales Reps, Production Team and IT Team (Aaron) who poured their love and sweat into LifeTips, WriterAccess, SplitTestLabs and WordVision. We couldn't have gotten through the year without your hard work and endless dedication. 

Cheers to everyone! Happiest Holidays, Best Wishes in the New Year, may you give back as much as you get and may a full moon always hang in your skies!

Every week, Byron and I (Amanda) host Lifetips Radio on WebmasterRadio.fm and while most of our shows are geared toward the Green Revolution (Viva La Revolution!) we have also peppered in a few topics that venture out into other territories, such as this weeks show on economics and where the US is headed. But what we care most about is you, our listeners and gurus! If you have a topic that you feel needs discussing, whether it is just for Byron and I to chat about during the open or worthy of a full show's dedication, send me an email with your ideas. Better yet, you can even send me questions before and during the show that you would like asked! Be a part of the show in an interactive way!

So tune in and get involved in LifeTips Radio. And until next time, I encourage you to take a listen to this song: "You, Me and The Bourgeoisie" by The Submarines. Besides being a total earwig, it's def a green themed song.(And is featured in the new Apple ad.)

Enjoy!

To all of our wonderful gurus and clients, we at LifeTips Editorial wish you the happiest of holidays, full of good wishes, cheer and family memories in the making (like the time Uncle Louie dropped his dentures in the egg nog, or that time cousin Hilary laughed so hard she shot gravy out of her nose.) We will all be out of office on Thursday, Turkey Day, but a few of us (Jamison) will cheerfully (not begrugingly, I didn't say begrugingly) be back in the office on Friday. 

Jamison (whose Native-American name is "Low Man on Totem Pole") will be here to help you with anything you need. Anything at all! Just say the word!

Writers! "Tryptophan overdose" is no excuse for missing any upcoming deadlines. Please plan accordingly.

Clients!  We (Jamison) will be bright-eyed and diligently working hard for you on Friday should you need anything.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!