Google Microsurveys, Private Blog Networks, FaceBook Search, SEO, Speedlink 13:2012

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a great week and enjoying your weekend. If you are someone who is interested in SEO, most likely, you may have noticed that this week was dominated by the news surrounding the “big” slap Google has been undertaking against private blog networks, and yet another “small” Panda update that affected 1.6% of search results.

Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected. Background on Panda: goo.gl/mTKCH

— A Googler (@google) March 23, 2012

Did you get hit from Google’s recent changes?

Anyway, some may have been caught by surprise, but Matt Cutts did announce recently on SXSW that Google, in its effort to provide relevant and quality results, plans to level the playing field, to “over-optimized” or “overly SEO’ed sites in the upcoming weeks. Is this the beginning? While there are plenty of articles written around Google’s latest moves (blog networks), the one I enjoyed reading the most was “OMG, The Sky is Falling” and “Is This the End of Link Building”.

Some other noteworthy news, is about Google’s new monthly user-activity feature, FaceBook silently working on a new search engine, and another “possible” way for  you to make money from Google with microsurveys.

As usual, in no particular order:

SEO/Marketing

• Unnatural Link Warnings and Blog Networks
• Building Links with Video Content
• 63 Free (or Almost Free) Ways to Market Your Business
• 25 Clever Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List
• How to Optimize Your Mobile Site for Search Engines

Content/Online Business Bites

• Why You Should Build an Audience Before You Build a Business
• Want To Sell Ads On Your Blog?
• F%$#! Link Building. Content Marketing FTW
• Information Overload and How it’s Killing Your Business

Social Web/Other Cool Stuff

• 21 Unexpected Ways Brands Can Use Pinterest
• Enhance your brand’s Twitter profile page(coming soon?)
• 28 Things You Need To Know About The New Facebook Pages
• How to Automate Your Social Activities(heard of ifttt?)

5 common mistakes in SEO (and 6 good ideas!)

Maile Ohye from Google covers the five most common errors she finds in SEO, and then concludes with six quick tips and best SEO practices to make sure you’re on the right track. Don’t forget to implement author markup.

That’s it! Enjoy and have a great week ahead.