Quality content is king. It’s what the search engines love, and what some of us feel stuck to produce sometimes. If it makes you feel any better, it’s a struggle that most of us have to accept – as we’re not content machines.

But there are ways by which you can remedy this situation and so here are a few tips by which you can avoid the proverbial writer’s block:

#1: Browse other websites

If you are unable to produce content as you wish you should, it’s probably a good idea to check websites or blogs which create in the same ‘niche’ as you do. In the process, you might be able to find out whether you can add valuable information to the content already created or even create content that might be missing.

#2: Use audio or video

Instead of just sticking to text-related content, it’s a good idea to also produce audio or video posts especially if everyone in your niche is sticking to blogs only. Finding different ways by which you can deliver this content can also help you get out of a rut.

#3: Read comments or browse forums for problems

Reading comments, browsing forums and social media sites will give you content ideas as there are some people who are looking for information or are looking to solve a problem. Interestingly, you can look for what’s most recent in the news as well. All you will have to do is add a new angle to the content, and maintain a repository of ideas in the process.

Getting your website noticed is one of the most important things that you have to carry out especially if you want to be profitable, and gain an edge over your competitors. While you can hire an SEO company to do this for you, it costs a lot of money.

And so, here are a couple on-site and off-site tools that you can use in order to do so:

#1: Google Webmaster Tools
Not only does this tool work as an onsite tool but also as an offsite one. Statistics on factors such as impressions, keyword visibility, average position of keywords, time spent on your site, click through rate and indexing issues can be obtained, all for the purpose of helping you improve your target keywords.

#2: Xenu’s Link Sleuth
This tool is not only useful for site audits but can also provide you with information such as broken links, lost mail servers, and even produces the different types of code being used on specific pages. The best part is that it downloads directly on to your desktop and is user-friendly.

#3: Google Insights for Search
Primarily, this tool helps you find out how many times a particular keyword is searched for in different parts of the world, or even in general. Not only can you find this information city-wise but also find keywords that are closely related to the one that you running a search for.

#4: Rank Checker
This tool is very useful for those who want to check multiple rankings and don’t have much time, working effectively if you want to do a quick competitor analysis or know where you page lands for different search terms.

Here are some of the search engine related articles and posts we have found interesting this week.

Can Google Detect an Affiliate Website?

Graywolf: The answer to that is slightly nuanced but, for simplicity’s sake, they don’t hate affiliate websites. Nor have I seen any evidence that shows affiliate sites are penalized.

Google New Shows You What’s New With Google Products

Google Tutor: Google New is a service launched by Google recently to help a Google fan stay abreast of all the new things and developments happening in the world of Google products, all at one page.

How To Find Public Domain Works with Google

What are public domain works, and how can you find them on the Web? (Wendy Boswell)

Kindle Secret Exposed: Popular Highlights Reveal Content That Clicks

Search Engine People: Readers can highlight passages on the Amazon Kindle. When your highlights sync with your Amazon Kindle account they get shared with Amazon. Amazon aggregates those highlights into Popular Highlights.

Bing Social now with added recommendations.

P Bradley: Bing Social Search is supposed to help by providing suggestions for people that you can follow, based on the searches that you run

47 sites you can use instead of Wikipedia

Wendy Boswell: Wikipedia is perhaps the most popular reference site online, with millions of high quality articles available on virtually any topic. However, there are limits to what Wikipedia can offer.

Microsoft’s Bing, bold bets face payoff test

Seattle Times interviews Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Bing: “Our maps are better, our images our better, our picture is different. And Google keeps responding. In a sense, because we have lower share, it’s almost easier for us to try new things. They have to sort of stay conservative, they gotta make a lot of money.”

For Google, Open Is the New Closed

Google Watch: “Google CEO Eric Schmidt wowed (and scared) the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt Sept. 28 when he talked about autonomous search and serendipity engines, but he also piqued curiosity by framing Google as open and Apple as closed. If you really think about it, Google’s open strategy can be limited by companies taking open-source platforms and adapting them for their own benefit. ”

Facebook Jumps Yahoo; Second Largest Video Site in U.S.

SE Watch: According to comScore Video Metrix, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer

Google, Facebook Tout Serendipity Engines, Personalized Media

eweek: One day after Google CEO Eric Schmidt touted autonomous search as a serendipity engine where information comes to users instead of tracking them down, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the future of media will be personalized.

Recapping Google’s new two-factor authentication

Google’s Matt Cutts: Two-factor authentication is something you have (e.g. a phone) and something you know (e.g. a password). It’s a Big Deal because if your account or business has two-factor authentication, those accounts are immediately less likely to be phished, hijacked, or otherwise abused. There’s a neat Google Authenticator application that runs on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

Microsoft Launches A New Loyalty Program: Bing Rewards

Search Engine Land: Prior Microsoft search loyalty programs, SearchPerks and Cashback, were retired. But maybe the third time’s the charm: today Microsoft is rolling out Bing Rewards Preview (beta). It’s a credit card or airline-style loyalty program that offers users credits that can be redeemed for products, gift cards or charitable donations.

Twitter leap-frogs MySpace in US web rankings

techradar: Twitter makes it into the top 50 web properties.

Propeller.com Spinning to a Stop

SE Watch: Propeller was the new name for NetScape’s social news experiment, a project which first emerged out of AOL as the killer app for the Netscape portal and originally led by Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc.

Google Instant Hasn’t Really Changes Traffic Referrals

SE Roundtable: As you know, Google Instant has changed how people search. But does that make a difference on how your pages are ranked, how people search and ultimately how people click on your Google listing to view your web site.

Google’s Bringing “Sexy” Back to Display Ads

Google believes that in 2015, 75 percent of ads on the web will be “social” in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities. 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches).

AOL Acquires TechCrunch and Mike Arrington is Really Excited About It

SE Journal: Arrington explains that nothing is going to change on the blog, they will continue to write and run it as they always have, and that is precisely what AOL wants them to do.

Official: Bing xRank Is Dead

SE Land: Launched in 2007, xRank was essentially Bing’s version of Google Trends, but with a number of additional features.

Google CEO Schmidt Pitches Autonomous Search, Flirts with AI

eweek: Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the search engine’s next step is “autonomous search,” bringing information to users instead of making them seek it… This means Google will conduct searches for users without them having to manually conduct searches. As an example, Schmidt said he could be walking down the streets of San Francisco and receive information about the places around him on his mobile phone without having to click any buttons.

For all the straight talking “I don’t care what you think, I will say what I want” attitude he has on TV, it seems to be quite the opposite on the web for Simon Cowell. Observations on certain trends seem to suggest that the former American Idol judge is going out of his way to avoid bad press.

Observers have stated that it is almost impossible to find any bad news about Cowell on Google’s searches and that he probably has something to do with it. An actual test of this allegation seems to confirm it, as any search for “Simon Cowell” does not turn up anything negative about the Briton.

The theory is that Cowell is using an SEO or Search Engine Optimization firm to ensure that nothing but the good stuff turns up on Google. This could be true as any critical news of him only appears after the 20th page on Google’s search results. Casual users wouldn’t go beyond even the 3rd page on any search result. The theory seems to carry even more weight in light of a censorship story.

Apparently a blog slashing Cowell and his behavior was taken down by the host, WordPress. They had explained the action by calling it a violation of the terms and conditions of the website. Although the blog was restored after several hours Hans Ebert, the author of the blog, did some digging to find out the truth. According to Ebert, the complaint had come from an SEO firm that was operating out of Bangalore, India. Further digging revealed that the SEO firm was under contract from a firm in London, England which gets them to monitor news about specific personalities. A spokeswoman for Cowell rubbished the story and denied any knowledge of a person named Ebert.

Do you remember your favorite teacher? Perhaps it was a math teacher who helped you overcome your fear of trigonometry, a chorus teacher who gave you the solo you so badly wanted, or a coach who pushed you to become the MVP you are today…whoever your favorite teacher was, we want to hear about him or her!

As this school year comes to an end, we are paying tribute to America’s heroes – our teachers – and we need your help. Bing would like you to submit a comment about a teacher who positively impacted your life (or the life of a child) at bing.com/education and in return, we will give you a $5 donation to help fund a teacher’s classroom project on DonorsChoose.org. Consider it conscientious conversations online: share a story about your favorite teacher and pay it forward to another one. How easy is that?

On average, teachers spend more than $1,000 out of their own pockets to fund classroom projects, and with impending budget cuts this number is expected to rise even higher. By sharing memories of favorite teachers, we can honor them by giving back to the teacher community. Share about your favorite teacher and help another teacher. Help one teacher and impact the education of a whole classroom of children.

Together we can help teachers get the materials they need to provide all students with a great education. 

Here’s how it works:

· Visit bing.com/education and submit a comment about a teacher who positively impacted your life or the life of a child you know. You may comment on up to five teachers.

· Receive an email from Bing with your $5 donation code and link to DonorsChoose.org.

· Decide what classroom project to fund with your $5 donation from Bing.

· Search for your comment on the Bing map. Bing will send every teacher their comments in a congratulations letter.   

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start commenting about your most favorite teacher and start giving back to education!

Barbara Blanchard – Bing

Ok, it is not Friday yet…but I know a few weeks back Stefan mentioned getting the local listing center team on camera and today we have Mikko, Bing’s local listing center Senior Program Manager to answer some of your questions we have seen in the Bing Community Forums.

We hope to have Mikko back fairly regularly to bring us updates on all things Bing local listing center.

Thanks Mikko!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

 

Other useful links:

Bing Local Listing Center

Bing Local Listing Center Community Forum

We’re happy to announce two new features to the Bing app for Windows phones. The first is a redesign to the home page. We changed the navigation to give people faster access to common searches, such as Movies and Traffic.

 The second feature is turn-by-turn navigation for Windows 6.x phones, powered by Bing Maps. We took advantage of the Microsoft Tellme team’s expertise in voice applications to deliver an amazingly lifelike voice experience for the turn-by-turn navigation. If you have a Windows phones on Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T you can use the voice guided navigation.

Now when getting directions with Bing, you’ll see a new “Navigate” button. By selecting it, Bing will calculate your route, and guide you as you drive. You can select the fastest or shortest route, choose to avoid traffic and/or tolls, get a map or a list of directions, and see arrows and hear alerts to know which way to turn next.  

The navigation feature is compatible with the phones below. If you have one of these and are in the U.S., check your phone for the update or go to m.bing.com.

Windows phone

HTC Fuze

HTC Pure

HTC HD2

HTC Tilt 2

HTC Touch Diamond 2

HTC Touch HD

HTC Touch Pro

HTC Touch Pro 2

Motorola Q9c

Samsung Jack

Samsung Omnia II

Samsung Propel

T-Mobile Dash 3G

 Justin Jed – Bing for Mobile