Get Savvy! IMU is Back

Image via CrunchBase

Last month I had the opportunity to take 10 hours of classes through Inbound Marketing University (IMU). These online classes (details below) were taught by leaders in the field and covered a wide range of timely topics. By passing an exam on the material, I became eligible to be called an 'Inbound Marketing Certified Professional.' You can see the official badge on the upper left of this blog.

What is an 'Inbound Marketing Certified Professional?'

The certification is administered by Hubspot and "acknowledges the recipients proficiency in Inbound Marketing principals and best practices. These principles include: blogging, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing, and closed-loop analysis. In order to receive the Inbound Marketing Certification, the recipient must pass a comprehensive certification exam with a score of 75% or higher. "

The great news is that IMU is back! The original ten classes are being offered again next month and there are two new classes available. The courses are free but you must register by August 12. The link to register is at the end of this article.

The original 10 classes are:

Class 1: How to Blog Effectively for Business Professors: Ann Handley & Mack Collier, MarketingProfs

Class 2: SEO Crash Course to Get Found Professor: Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing

Class 3: Social Media and Building Community Professor: Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

Class 4: Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn Professor: Elyse Tager, Silicon Valley American Marketing Association

Class 5: Viral Marketing and World Wide Raves Professor: David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing & PR andWorld Wide Rave

Class 6: Advanced SEO Tactics: On Beyond Keyword Research Professor: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Class 7: Calls to Action and Landing Page Best Practices Professor: Jeanne Hopkins, MECLABS, Marketing Experiments

Class 8: Inbound Lead Nurturing Professor: Brian Carroll, MECLABS, InTouch

Class 9: Successful Email Marketing Professor: Eric Groves, Constant Contact

Class 10: Analyzing Inbound Marketing Professor: Marshall Sponder, Monster.com, Web Analytics Association for Social Media

The 2 new classes are:

1)PR for Inbound Marketing

Professor: Todd Defren, SHIFT Communications

2)Twitter for Business

Professor: Laura Fitton, Pistachio Consulting, Twitter For Dummies

To register for the live webinar classes and the Certification Exam, go to the IMU home page.

What's Going On With Google?

Image via Wikipedia

What the Latest Shift in Search Engine Rankings Means for Your Site
By Edwin Huertas

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is in an uproar these days. If you have an Internet-based business, you need to know what's going on - and how you can take advantage of it.

As you know, SEO is all about getting your site listed in the search engines' top results. The higher up in the results you rank, the better chance you have of capturing your prospective customer's attention. Get them to click on your link, and you are on your way to making a sale.

So knowing how to get those coveted high rankings is critical to the success of your Internet business.

The way that search engines currently spider, rate, and index a website depend on various factors, including link popularity, content, site structure, and a mixture of other variables. All of these can be manipulated by most webmasters and SEO specialists.

But this could be changing very soon!

The word on the Net is that search engines are changing the way they spider and index websites to help them serve better results to their search audience. They are incorporating new ranking algorithms that will take into consideration input that is submitted by "real people" (as opposed to primarily software calculations).

Google (and others) will give higher priority to sites that Web surfers vote for. The way a Web surfer "votes" for a website will be completely transparent. It will not be something that can be easily manipulated by webmasters and SEO specialists.

If this happens, we will see an entirely different pattern emerge - and it will affect thousands of websites across the Net. Many that were once showing up in the top 10 results will no longer be there. New sites (rated using the latest algorithms) will take their place.

Google currently asks Web surfers (normally users that are logged into their Google account) to move their search results around, based on the surfer's own idea of how important each one is. If they like a certain page in the search results, they can move it higher on the list so that anytime they search for the same keyword(s) they will be presented with their own personalized set of results.

Google claims that this data is not currently calculated in their existing algorithms, but I seriously doubt that. Search engines are constantly looking to improve their search results. By using actual feedback provided by their users, they can get a better understanding of what Web surfers consider relevant.

So that's the main thing that I think will make a difference in the way results are ranked in the future: Web users will have more influence. In addition, I believe the search engines will be spidering online videos, article comments, and social media.
Having videos on your website helps your SEO now. (Webmasters love to link to good videos.) But if a search engine can actually read the contents of a video, you might have to give more serious consideration to the content of the videos on your site than you have in the past.

According to many SEO analysts, search engines will be looking at criteria like these when scoring your Web pages:

How often have Web surfers moved (voted) your listing to the top of the results?

What type of searches have those users performed in the past?

How many times has your page been bookmarked (voted for) on a majorsocial networking site (i.e., Digg.com, LinkedIn.com, and StumbleUpon.com)?

How many other sites are talking about your site?

Does your Web page have video? If so, how long do people watch it?

How often do website visitors return to your page?

How many comments does your page have on it? (More people posting comments on your page means more popularity, as far as search engines are concerned.)

What YOU Can Do About the "New" Ranking Rules

The new search engine ranking methods are sure to bring a lot of changes to the world of search engine optimization. But don't worry. You won't have to learn a bunch of new SEO tactics. One thing will always hold true: CONTENT IS KING.

Plain and simple, if you have good Web content, surfers will bookmark it, comment on it, and talk about it on other websites. Whether you are offering useful videos or informative articles, people appreciate high-quality content. And search engines will take notice. This will continue to boost your SEO efforts more than anything else.

With that said, keep in mind that no one knows for sure what the search engines are going to do. They guard their secrets like the CIA guards theirs. We can only make an educated guess as to what the future of SEO holds, and try to keep on top of the latest changes.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.