Pinterest Blocking Links, Google Warnings, Rebuilding Digg, Speedlink 29:2012

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. Last week, it was announced that Digg was acquired by Betaworks for $500K. As expected, the “sphere” reacted saying that the amount was low, despite the network loosing its traction. This week, further clarification has been made and as it so seems, the $500K that Betaworks paid for Digg was only for the domain name and copyrights. Digg as you know it is actually being dismantled and the new owners are promising a completely new Digg come August 1. Don’t know about you, but I am very curious to see what’s coming. BTW, they are also asking you to help them “rethink Digg”, by completing a short survey form.

Other noteworthy news include Google buying the popular email app Sparrow, and some webmasters yet again receiving link warnings from GWT this week. This time though, it appears that you can safely ignore these warnings. Go figure!

On a side note, Pinterest, in its effort to fight spam is not making it easy for marketers to use the network for affiliate marketing. So if you are using Amazon links, URL shorteners, or some sort of URL builders, you may want to rethink your strategy. Better link to a landing page instead.

Finally, and as this whole “linking” stuff finds its sanity, you should know that asking for “link removals” can cost you money. Yeah, insane, but there appears to be some directories that are charging money to have links removed. If this pans out, maybe I’ll build my own “spammy” dierctory, include links from everyone and charge some few bucks to have links removed, just kidding, lol. Anyway, if for some reason, you face the need to go that route (request link removal), you can always try other measures first.

As usual, in no particular order:

Content Marketing/Online Business Bites

Search/Marketing

100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of SEO
Why Link Building Strategies Fail
Writing for Search Engines
Blekko Launches ROCKZi To Generate Social Search Signals (another social site?)
Google Now Shows You Your Most Recent Links

Social Web/Other Cool Stuff

An Introduction to 7 of the Most Popular Social Networks for Business
Tweet Old Post Plugin: New Version with More Control and Branding
6 Ways to Drive More Pinterest Engagement
40+ Tips on How to Become a Social Media Rock Star on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Around the Web [more roundups]

Using Webmaster Tools like an SEO

Learn how to use Webmaster Tools as if you were the SEO for www.googlestore.com. Maile Ohye will show you how to utilize Search queries, reduce duplicate content, and maximize PageRank and other ranking signals to your important pages.