A month ago, I updated on our rankings in Google. Since we set the benchmark back in April, many Google rankings have fluctuated and by day 48, they were just about back to where they were before we switched domains; however, there were a few that were still not quite there at day 108.
Today, day 153, some rankings are back, some are still fluctuating & some are even better than before the switch! Below represents those rankings that weren’t back the last time I updated…

Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond

I wanted to do a follow up to my post Embarrassment with these 4 Employment Strategies. I just read an article that Andy Beal mentioned on his blog called One in five employers uses social networks in hiring process. CareerBuilder.com did a study of more than 31,000 employers and 20% of them say that they will use social media when looking for job candidates. Here are some of the top concerns that stood out to me from the article:

• Information about alcohol or drug use (41% of managers said this was a top concern)
• Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page (40%)
• Bad-mouthing of former employers or fellow employees (28%)
• Inaccurate qualifications (27%)
• Unprofessional screen names (22%)

Wow. It makes you want to go to your social network profiles and search through all of your wall of comments to make sure that someone hasn’t said something that could be taken the wrong way or tainted the image you are trying to portray to an employer.

I have a short and interesting experience from a couple weeks ago. The Karcher Group belongs to a lot of the local chamber of commerce groups here in Canton, Ohio and we did a company bio plus an informational session on social media to the Young Professionals Network. I would say the group is all between the ages of 20-35 and is currently in the workforce. A bunch of the group has Facebook or MySpace and a couple have LinkedIn profiles. Out of a group of approximately 20 people, only about 2 people at most knew much about social media and its relationship to their reputation management. I would have figured that a group of that age would know more about this stuff. Sure they use social networks everyday and they never think twice. The fact they never considered was those same social media profiles could potentially hinder or prevent them from getting a job. Here are a couple quick tips to help manage your online reputation:

1. Use social media – Don’t be scared of it just because people can find you. If you are setting up the profiles, you have control of what shows up on them. This control allows you to dictate your image online and can help you. The article says that the “study did find that 24% of hiring managers found content on social networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate. Hiring managers
   said that profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate’s chances for a job.” That leads right into the second tip…
2. Network – Everyone has heard the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I’m not saying that I agree with this 100% but I think there is a lot of power and influence that comes with strong references. Social networks allow you to network and meet people that in some cases you would not be able to get to know. These connections could benefit you in some way down the road.
3. Actively monitor and interact – It’s good to have a profile on a social network to help with your online reputation management but creating it and “friending” some people is not good enough. To get the best return on your social media profiles you have to interact with the other people on the network. It is also important to monitor what gets posted and what you, yourself post. Imagine this; A couple years down the road you are looking for a new job. You start doing some research and find Company XYZ. You are about to apply when you realize that John Doe, a friend you went to high school with, works there. Now, have you really kept in touch with John over the years where you can ask him for a referral or reference, or did you just befriend him because you went to high school with him? That relationship now could make all the difference and you probably never took that into consideration when setting up that social network profile.

Being in the search engine marketing industry, sometimes I forget that most people don’t know everything about social media and the implications it can have. There is so much information out there and so much that I am still learning about it as well. Hopefully through articles like this and other publication outlets, others will be able to learn more about social media and be able to manage their own reputations online.

Is it possible that Yahoo! has decided to fade out their backlink reporting? In a recent update, many site owners are experiencing HUGE decreases in the amount of backlinks that Yahoo! is reporting. There are a few theories that might explain the decrease; I suspect that Yahoo! is starting to discredit or devalue the backlinks that are seen by Yahoo! as “less important”.

TKG.com hasn’t experienced this drastic decrease in backlinks being reported (at least not yet). We’re still not where we were prior to the domain transfer, but we continue to climb…

guest blogger: Megan Jeffery

I know that this blog is usually a great place to find tips on SEO, the latest news on our domain switch, and to find out what is happening in the Social Media world, but I thought this was a great place to discuss Google’s latest project. After all, what is Search Engine Optimization with out a search engine, especially one that has decided to build it’s own browser? If you haven’t heard already, today is the release date for Google’s much rumored new browser project – “Google Chrome”. Google’s “Chrome” is available for Windows only download sometime today.

According to Tech Crunch, Google introduced this project with a cartoon! If you would like to read some of the more technical aspects, Google Blogoscoped has some great information. The cartoon is now up on Google’s official blog. I read through it, and followed it for the most part, but I must admit, I am not a software engineer, and they officially lost me somewhere in the middle. So, let me just give you the aspects of this new browser that stuck in my mind. To me, one of the advantages of this browser will be that it will be more “application friendly”. Google wants this product to be able to seemlessly integrate the web applications users like most. The whole point behind building thier own browser seems to be that they feel that other browsers are old fashioned. They don’t work with video, games, chat, etc. as well as they should. Haven’t we all experienced the crash of a browser right in the middle of something important? This frustration will supposedly be remedied by the fact that Google Chrome will allow for each action inside the browser to have it’s own process. It will no longer require that one process finish before the user can begin a new one.

A few of the main features that I thought were interesting:

• The “Omnibox” (URL box) will have memory, so if you were looking at a particular page at some point, all you have to do is type a keyword from the page and it takes you back. The Omnibox also offers suggestions.
• Each tab has all it’s own unique functions, including the URL box.
• Because of the new technology Google has built, it is supposed to be FAST!
• The default page will show your nine most visited pages, and on the side show the site you search on the most, creating a personalized experience every time you open your browser.
• It has a privacy mode: the browser is in read only, when this feature is enabled nothing you are viewing is being saved in the history – such as when you are shopping for gifts for loved ones!
• Created a new way to discourage malware by “sandboxing” them – the browser will not allow writing files to your harddrive or reading of documents on your desktop.
• When you arrive at a possible phishing site, Google Chrome will alert you, as Google has built a database of “bad sites” and the browser will have the ability to alert you when you land on one.
• Google Chrome has incorporated “Gears”, an effort to make browsers better for developers, and increase all web standards.

These are just a few of the many new features Google Chrome is offering. I am sure many of you are wondering why Google would build it’s own browser when it essentially funds Firefox. According to Google, they want all browsers to be better, they want competition and creativity. They have taken ideas from other browsers, and hope that others will use thier ideas as well, so they have made the entire Google Chrome Project Open Source.