Often one of the first things we look at is SEO benefit. We know that back links are a valuable commodity and initially Pinterest offered great value. Recently however, they adjusted their backlinks to be nofollow which means that the links do not give significant SEO benefit (I personally think there is still value to nofollow incoming links) so if we are thinking about using the system solely to build links, we’d be wasting our time.

Next thing we look at is Pinterests own Search visibility. While I’ve personally seen it appear in search results, it doesn’t seem to have the same impact that linkedin or facebook has but for a new player, there is some strong evidence to support its own search visibility.

So according to SEM Rush their Search visibility is off the charts. No surprises of course with some 800K results in the Top 2 pages and significant growth from the end of last year.

Now what sort of results are we seeing? Being the Minnie Mouse fan that I am, I’m in desperate need of some party suggestions. And according to Google’s keyword tool, a lot of other people are as well. “Minnie Mouse Party Ideas” has some 8100 estimated searches per month. Have a look a the #1 spot!

So what do we do with this data?

Given that we know the demographics definitely skew female and that it’s a very visual/artsy community, the site lends itself well to businesses who cover at least one of these elements. For some, Pinterest is already proving to be a solid referral source. For SEO benefits, we’d suggest that this should not be the primary reason for joining and being active. We do encourage exploration of yet another great example of the Internet and the joys it can bring to folks.

So this year in addition to these quirks, my search results really struggled with my location. An example of this inner turmoil is represented in the following screenshot. On a search for my mates business Action Stump Removal, such a localized search I imagined would yield strictly local results. However, you will notice that one of the results slipped in is from Minnesota, a place I’ve been twice many, many years ago.

I’m not overly sure how to explain this other than my inner turmoil theory where Google sees my search history as being predominately US-based but knows my current location is Sydney. This stray result has a decent domain keyword match though the website is no shining example with indications that it was last “Revised Wed, 23 May 2007″, a domain authority of 7/100 and a grand total of 2 incoming links according to Majestic SEO. So my hunch here is that Google might be struggling between prioritizing between personalized search and location in trying to deliver most accurate results.

As always, I was driven by curiosity to see what Bing was up to in this situation to see if they were picking up their game there. They offer up the option of restricting my results to Australia only (an extra click, it’s not the default option)

So sure enough, the results are only within Australia but they cover all of Australia. The first result is from Sydney, the second Queensland and the third Victoria. Not overly helpful I’m afraid.

So even with their confusions, Google still gets closer to a better user experience and result. I have a feeling these quirks are more an exception than the rule.

Here are just a couple of tips:

1. Follow other early adopters – there is no shortage of places to find the next shiny thing. A few choice selections on twitter will help but they can be easily missed so I’d suggest focussing on some key blogs. My favorite these days is TheNextWeb which has a very comprehensive coverage, so too Mashable which tends to crank out info by the second. Techmeme is my favorite aggregator.

2. Keep a master login list – the issue here is not that you should be concerned that your data is out there that you are not looking after but because there are times when you will forget about an account that maybe you didn’t “get” initially that upon a revisit recognize its value. This list (which can also remind you of your login info) can help to jog your memory. Evernote can be a useful tool for storing this list.

3. Really test – put it through it’s paces. Use it as if you want to break it and get to know it pretty well before looking around at reviews to see what others have discovered.

4. Use a persona – Mostly I use my own account for the testing but there is the odd occasion when an incorrect setup may impact your account so I have a few dummy accounts that i will use without fear of reprisal. I think a lot of us made the mistake of setting up Google Analytics accounts under our profiles instead of new accounts when it first came out and then losing that data when you had to move it over. We still come across those every once in a while.

While I’ve forced a move to a more manageable and balanced lifestyle (more away-from-the-computer time), I certainly enjoy that side of the business and it may be a big reason why I got into the Internet Marketing game in the first place. I feel like our clients would and should expect that we are doing this so that they don’t have to (until we decide that they need to).

So what’s my latest signup? I just signed up for an invite at www.so.cl, Microsoft’s own foray into social media…maybe. Also just began playing around with Gentlemint which is a guys version of Pinterest. How about you? Any newbies you want to share?

I recently noticed the announcement on my search results explaining the latest updates. 

This takes you to a page that further explains their new service and in typical google fashion includes a video and tells us that “search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends.” Maybe.

So first things first, if you’re looking to be part of this latest Search iteration get yourself a Google+ profile. For businesses, create a page. Set up your circles, start following, engaging, sharing. Start getting comfortable with it, I think it’s only going to continue in its importance.

So for us, it’s really just a matter of here we go again, how do we adapt what we do without diluting impact for our clients? Right now we’re not 100% certain, we continue to do what we do and start to address any anomalies in our reports as they come through but you should expect to see a reduction in the number of keywords driving visitors to your website (so far it’s a pretty small number). Rankings (for what they are worth) will remain trackable but the detailed keyword referrals will no longer apply.

So that’s a shame, not the end of the world as some SEO companies fear but a real shame. Forget about SEO and Internet Marketing companies who report on these statistics. Think about the website owners, especially those who use this data to help focus their business strategies and goals. Again, not the end of the world for them but a loss of some very valuable information.

Comment spam is pervasive especially to blog owners and it always intrigued me as to why bother. Most blog commenting systems are nofollow, many moderate and for the most part comment spam is pretty obvious so it begs the question, why are they doing this?

Email spam has been around since email began and should probably be considered the earliest form of Email Marketing. Strong subject. Succinct copy. Generally text-only…hey they do a lot right. Of course they also do a lot wrong like, oh I don’t know, not asking folks if they would like to receive their emails? I’m not forgetting listservs either as one of the earlier places to spam online.

So rather than getting pissy at spammers and ridiculous commenters, I like to learn why they are doing what they do. Those spammy one-page websites with all the bells, whistles and talking heads that I thought were ridiculous appear to actually work as I’ve had several clients reach out and ask about them. Some had even taken the offers. While I’d like to suggest that not all of them are rubbish, I’m afraid to say that the majority of them are. Most likely they are some out-of-the-box affiliate marketing scheme aimed at selling a cheap e-book on how to make money online by selling cheap e-books.

Comment spam like I said had baffled me until I saw a whole series of them on a blog post that was good quality and dofollow. Quite obviously that website did not moderate comments and this is what the comment spammers are hoping for. Get your comments out en-masse, maybe 1% will be fruitful. Hard Yakka if you ask me and not very beneficial but for most of these services, a link is a link no matter what the quality is like.

There have been a few sites over the years that seemed to attract a high level of spam and often this is where I will also look to help with Internet Marketing for clients only instead of spamming people, we prefer to do it properly and provide some value. A while ago ut was digg.com, then squidoo.com became quite useful and now I’m seeing quite a bit on Linkedin and Quora so I’ve been checking them out to see how they fare.

iGoogle – this is my own little dashboard with relevant information that I have gathered and continue to gather. My page is pretty long but it contains quite a few very useful pieces which includes my email, calendar, client blog feeds, industry blog feeds, google hot trends, sticky notes…a lot of good stuff that can be viewed at a glance.

Raven – there’s a lot to like about Raven, they’ve provided a great deal of value under one roof. All of our clients go straight into this tool including target keywords, Google Analytics not to mention the keyword research tools that they provide. For us though it’s the reporting capabilities that we love, taking what was once a very manual process and automating many parts of it.

Social Mention and Google Alerts – a bit part of what we do is listening on behalf of our clients. What’s going on? Is there buzz? Are customers complaining? Are there opportunities we can leverage? For this, Google Alerts has traditionally been our tool of choice but increasingly we have been in need of something a little more comprehensive which is where www.socialmention.com comes in. Pop your keyword in (or URL) and create an email alert or grab the RSS feed and pop it into iGoogle.

Open Site Explorer – this tool built by the folks at SEOMoz (also a very useful resource) provides a wealth of relevant information about a website or competitors.  It shows the number of links, anchor text distribution and  linking pages as well as their own rating scales.

Tweetdeck – This has become my tool of choice for updating my Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Foursquare accounts as well as a very useful realtime listening option. Best of all its free….for now (it was recently bought by Twitter, so we will wait to see what happens next).

What tools are in your daily toolkit?  Share with us in the comments.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/604255