You might wonder, when it comes to competitive keywords, does Google prefer ranking big domains? This question can be answered by taking a close, detailed look at the relationship between keyword difficulty and the size of the domain. The result of this study is important, because it will lead us to a deeper understanding of the behavior of Google's ranking algorithm when it comes to ranking competitive keywords (in relation to both small and large domains).

Definition of the Factors

To quantify keyword difficulty, you will associate it with the keyword searches; the higher the keyword search volume, the more competitive the keyword, in most cases. We can look not only at the amount of search volume, but also the number of indexed pages in Google containing the exact term. The higher the number of competing pages, the more the keyword would tend to be competitive. 

Therefore, to give a mathematical definition, keyword difficulty can be approximated by the following formula:

Keyword Difficulty = Keyword Search Volume (Exact match) x Google competing pages

In the above definition, it is obvious that if a certain keyword has a very high search volume and many competing pages, it is a difficult keyword for which to rank in Google.

The size of the domain can be measured by the number

No matter how great your product is, or how great your website looks, your online business will be left spinning its wheels unless the search engines know you exist… and your potential customers can find you in the search engines!

We wrote on Day One about giving your website a thorough tune-up, and on Day Two about providing great content on your website to keep your visitors and customers coming back again and again.

Now we're going to give you some tips on snagging more search engine traffic in 2010.

Revisit your keyword research regularly: If it's been a few months (or a few years!)  since you did keyword research on your market, you could be targeting keywords that no one is searching on anymore, and missing out on keywords that would bring great, highly targeted traffic to your website.   Things change pretty quickly in the search engines!

We'd suggest that you revisit your research quarterly to make sure that your content and your SEO strategies are taking direct aim at your market.

Don't ignore the power of local search: Showing up at the top of the results for your local area in Google has never been more important, and Google is reaching out to businesses to make sure they take advantage of the opportunity. Google's

A recent survey from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit, found that most businesses are still only experimenting with social media. With this in mind, it seems worth paying attention to how some big and successful brands use social media in their own strategies.

One company that is finding social media incredibly useful is Intuit, makers of popular financial software like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. Seth Greenberg, Director of National Media Buying and Digital Marketing for Intuit's consumer group answered some of our questions about how effective the companies efforts are in social media.

Intuit actively participates on Twitter and Facebook daily, as well as YouTube, and some advertising with MySpace and LinkedIn. When asked if they focus on any networks the most, Greenberg says, "Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the focus because more than 50% of customers use it. Twitter offers a transparent, real-time engagement with customers and prospects on questions, issues or general comments they may have.  Through both networks we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."

we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."

We asked w

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there's no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.

LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd.

If you haven't already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics:

• LinkedIn has more than 60 million members
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips:

1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group
Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first:

• Create a personal account and build a network of contacts. Reach out to customers with whom your business has a solid relationship – those who truly know your company and its products or services. Ask them to write recommendations for your compa

Last year, Google's Matt Cutts dropped the bomb(to put it in the exaggerated tone that many took the news in), that Google was considering taking site speed into consideration as one of many potential ranking factors for search results.
This of course freaked a lot of people out, but as Matt and Google as a whole has maintained, this would not trump relevance.
It would be taken more into consideration when there are two sites of relatively equal relevance, but one site loads faster and delivers a better user experience. Matt reiterated this point in an interview we did with him this week at SMX.

WebProNews also chatted with Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer for Google at SMX, about website performance (speed), how that pertains to search rankings and the user experience, and some tips for making sure your site is up to speed, so to speak.

As far as site speed as a ranking factor, Ohye pretty much makes the same point as Cutts, and it's probably not going to be something where all of a sudden all of the faster sites are ranking better and the slower ones are doing worse. But it does enhance the user experience, and she refers to a study that found that an optimized site actually increased conversions by 16%. So if you're not optimizing your site's performance for Google, maybe that's a good enough reason on its own.

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