Google is to roll out its click-to-call feature for mobile advertising and apps appearing on its Content Network. The company announced the expansion of its internet marketing services at the Google I/O developers' conference in San Francisco, California. Click-to-call numbers appear as animated banner ads on mobile devices with full internet browsers. They feature a button that connects a user direct to a business. Google said that offering the option of telephone contact can generate more qualified leads, as customers who call businesses are "more ready to make a purchase". Furthermore, the numbers lend more credibility to a brand, which can result in higher clickthroughs and website traffic. Once a campaign is up and running, Google said that it will provide analysis of calls received by campaign, keyword and ad group to help brands monitor and improve their marketing. Google introduced click-to-call numbers for local ads on mobile devices in January. News brought to you by ClickThrough - a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.

Rick Burnes leads the content production team at HubSpot, a marketing software firm that produces the Inbound Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketing University. Chances are, most of the businesses you interact with as a consumer are on social media. Your local restaurant is blogging, your grocery store is on Twitter — even your favorite candy is on Facebook. Companies in mainstream, consumer-facing industries are all over social media. But how about other businesses? Manufacturers? B2B service providers? Equine dentists? Are they experimenting with social media? You bet. Here are five examples, all at different stages of their experiments, and all indicating the breadth of business use of social media.

Under scrutiny for lax – or even broken – privacy policies, it has been uncovered that several popular social networking sites have been sharing personal data with advertising companies, despite a policy that says information is not shared without consent. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that “the practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook (News - Alert) and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code,” the article said. After yet another round of warnings found on Facebook status updates far and wide, Facebook last week announced that it is adding additional measures to make sure its members aren’t the victims of security breaches. As TMCnet’s Alice Straight reported, users can ask to be notified by e-mail or text message if their account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that hasn’t been used before.

Yesterday Google TV was officially unveiled at its I/O conference with a live demonstration in front of an audience. The device isn’t designed to replace your cable or satellite box, its aim is to allow web content and television content to be viewed side-by-side from the same interface. This means that your website will be viewable from your TV with the use of Google TV, targeting a whole new type of audience. To get the website to display properly on TV’s it must be designed to display and work properly, this is possible with the posted guidelines by Google themselves. Websites must be simple, easy to navigate, designed for big screens, full of content, contain media such as music and can even contain Flash. So why is this relevant to search engine optimisation (SEO) and why does it emphasize its importance? From a personal point of view I believe SEO is going to be needed more than ever now the web is going to be available instantly through your TV. For example, your watching TV when suddenly an advert appears that takes your fancy, by being able to search for websites relevant to the adverts industry instantly you will be able to find what you want before you forget.

The slogan for this week’s announcement of Google TV is “TV meets Web, Web meets TV.” Google’s slogan is perfect because it's so disjointed -- and perfectly reflects the awkward relationship between the Web and television in 2010. The slogan for this week’s announcement of Google TV is “TV meets Web, Web meets TV.” Google’s slogan is perfect because it's so disjointed -- and perfectly reflects the awkward relationship between the Web and television in 2010. Google TV is basically Google Search built into your television; it will pull Web video, broadcast and cable TV into one tidy search box. In theory, using Google TV you could search for Fox and Friends and you’d find the actual broadcast and past episodes alongside of the hundreds of videos that Fox clips and publishes on the Web. Google TV could be the answer. The search giant could be the first company to successfully bring Web and TV together.

A little over a year ago, we published a guide to qualifying link prospects. That method still holds; however, in the past year, we have adjusted our thinking, honed our processes and most importantly created a few simple, free tools that will make your link qualification phase much faster. Before getting to the tips and tools, we’d like to quickly outline *our* model for effective link campaign design. This way, it will be easier to understand where link qualification fits and why it is such a critical step of any link building campaign. For reference, it might be best to review these prior articles on Search Engine Land: Linkable Asset Identification: A Starting Point For New Link Building Campaigns How To Research, Create And Distribute Highly-Linkable Content Different approaches to link prospecting: Link Prospecting Queries, Competitor Backlink Analysis. Topics include: Helping Fix Broken Links, Links to Attack Sites on Prospects’ Sites (I’ve read great stuff from Melanie Nathan and Darren Shaw on these methods but have no personal experience with them.) Link Request Outreach: 5 Steps To Maximize The Value Of Every Opportunity

One of my previous columns here on Link Week showcased a number of tools commonly used in link building. Since that post, a large number of new tools and services have come online, so I thought an update would be helpful. Not all of the sites listed will be traditional linking tools, I’ve also included a number of social media and general informational sites which can be used to find link partners. Before we move on, the obligatory disclaimer. I have no financial involvement with any of these tools, they are presented as source options only. Some are free, others are not, always read their fine print. Standard link building tools. When you hear the term “link building tools”, the type of tools listed below are usually what comes to mind. Most of the tools here are anything but standard, they all come with multiple options (except Yahoo SE) and share one point of commonality… they list out backlink results.

Building links can be a powerful and effective SEO practice to improve your search engine rank. However, there is a right and wrong way to build links and if you don't do it right, your website rank will suffer. Many internet marketing newbies go link crazy without having a real plan, and after exerting a great deal of effort they realize that they were doing it all wrong. Creating links is something that, if you do it using proven techniques and in an ethical way, can raise your website's rank over that of your competitors. Since link building is so important, you should know about the ways many new internet marketers err in this area of SEO. Study the following typical link building mistakes that you should avoid. A new course is causing quite a buzz in the Internet Marketing community and you can find more information about it at Confidential Conversions page.