The Internet ads have been spotted, etailers have posted their shopping guides, social trends are getting hot, and search queries are rising sharply.

It’s official, Mother’s Day Marketing Season is in full bloom along with the tulips!

Bing.com Shopping Promo for Mother's Day 2010 Bing.com Homepage Text Ad to Mother's Day Gift Guide »»»   Yahoo Homepage Ad

With interest and search volume on the rise (and still rising), and time running out, you will need to consider moving quickly to tap into the remaining Mother’s Day season for SEO, PPC and Social Media.

Google Trends Mother's Day 2010 - April 30 Day Search Trend

 
Kudos to Paul Kragthorpe for spotting what is either a Good Friday (long weekend) test or a limited/controlled release of a new format for Google’s search engine result pages (SERP’s).

Google New SERP for TEST

Always a clever one to notice similarities, Paul remarks seem to be on point:

Yesterday on their official blog, Yelp.com announced that they have launched new categories for business owners.  The expansion is quite thorough and allows the niche business to separate themselves from some of the more general category listings.  From “Disc Golf”, “Tattoo Removal”, “Window Installation”, “Lasik” and “Cosmetic Dentists”, there are now specific categories to match up with more specific user searches (see the complete list of 70 new categories below).

If you have not yet claimed your business listing on Yelp…well, what are you waiting for?  Yelp is a fantastic way for local businesses to promote themselves to their community and allows business owners to gauge the pulse of how they are being received by their customers.  Smart business owners will see definite benefits when they monitor their reviews, respond professionally to negative reviews, and interact positively with their current client base that utilizes Yelp.

If you find a reoccurring theme in your reviews, like your receptionist is frequently rude, your valet parking prices are too high, or cleanliness does not appear to be a priority, then these are all areas that can be addressed internally and if rectified will create a positive buzz and better customer experience.  And most importantly…better reviews.

There have been many reports and rumors about the forthcoming Open Directory Project overhaul, dubbed DMOZ 2.0, from as far back as March 2008. Recent info has hinted at the End of Q1. But just yesterday (Thu. Feb. 11th 2010), there was a strong rumor of a dmoz.org launch that might set one of the last days of March as the Full Launch date.

 
So what exactly is going to change with the launch of Dmoz 2.0?

I love you. 

No, scratch that. I hate you. 

Wait, please don’t unfollow me.  I didn’t really mean that.  I’m sorry. I was…drunk, yeah that’s it. I wasn’t thinking straight. Really, it’s not you…it’s me. 

I really do love you…but to be honest, I think I might hate you at the same time.

Social Media is Breaking My Heart

We have been seeing each other casually now for quite some time, but I have to wonder where this is going?  I remember the early days of our relationship, when you were just an occasional blog post, or we would slum around together on SixDegrees & Friendster. 

Boy, the times sure have changed and you are more popular then ever before.  Everyone is talking about you and seems to want a piece of you.  Maybe it is out of jealousy, but it  hurts to hear my friends and Search colleagues talk about how you “put out” great results when they are with you. 

Personally, I don’t like to tweet and tell.

SEMpdx’s fourth annual SearchFest event is only a few month’s away. If it’s anything like last year’s event it will be worth your time to attend, SEMpdx did a great job. There were many well known industry speakers and attendees at last years event, keynote speaker was Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin was a session panelist.

Recently, Google Analytics made an update to their Goal Conversion Tracking system that allows you to rearrange and change the position of your goals by simply selecting a different spot in a dropdown menu. At first glance earlier today, this new feature seemed to be an easy way to rearrange your goals to your preference so that you can see the goals that you want, where you them. But after testing it further I realized that is has a major flaw that you need to be wary of: Loss Corruption/Confusion of Goal History Data. 
 

Reordering your Analytic Conversion Goals became too simple…

Change your Analytics Goal Positions easily by selecting another dropdown menu option

 
Why this is significant

The team at Google Analytics has recently made an announcement stating that “Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible And Intelligent”. This system update has many new features, but the 2 that have been on my web analytics “Wish List” for some time are: 
 

• More Goals Per Profile – Now 20!
• Rearrange & Sort Goal Order

 
20 Goals instead of just 4 – That’s 500% more Useful and 1,000% Simpler!

Google Analytics now allows 20 Goals and Change Position feature

Old Salt

To find the Pirate Search ya’ll first have to follow some clues and go on a little search of your own…

Yesterday morning I received an email with a link in it to a new cnet article titled “Link exchanges: The poor man’s SEO”. Since link popularity building is an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign, I had to see what this longstanding publication had to say on the subject. I was more than a little shocked when I read the second sentence:

“Everyone else has to rely on the poor man’s search-engine optimization: the link exchange.”

I could hardly believe that cnet would seemingly recommend to website owners to participate in trading links to increase search engine rankings. There are many other free and low-cost link building alternatives that are actually endorsed by SEO professionals.

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