Has site content become the forgotten key to website success? With all the talk of link development, Google Panda and Penguin, and site penalties, shouldn’t we be looking closer to home for opportunities and great sites?
There's no question about it that content is really what influences the relevancy and opportunities for traffic and conversions. Great content is what people want when they visit a site. If the visitor can’t find what they want, having clicked the link, they'll hit the back button to the SERPs for another search, and to the competition. If they do, it's a wasted opportunity for you.
Without great content, it doesn’t matter how good your SERPs positioning might be. Reviewing your site content regularly will help keep it fresh and interesting.
If you’re not sure where to start with new content, why not chat to your peers on WebmasterWorld to get ideas for subject matter, and discuss ways to develop your sites?
Make 2014 the year of fresh and great quality content. We’ll see you in the forums.
Welcome to this WebmasterWorld Weekly Round-up.
The previous WebmasterWorld Weekly is
here.If you don't have the time to learn or follow the best practices for semantic searching, you might want to rethink your priorities. Join in our thread titled, "
Tricks to Google Ranks - Using Semantic Best Practices"
In an interesting short interview,
Google's Steve Grove sees G+ going places with live video. 
Facebook is up against a class action lawsuit over allegations that it monitors users' private messages. The problem being that the data is mined and passed onto third parties. Join our thread on the topic, "
Facebook Sued For Alleged Private Message Monitoring and Data Mining
The great thing about the Internet is it's possible for smaller businesses to compete with larger businesses. With a good mix of passion and creativity, it is possible for your small website to outperform even the biggest companies. Find out more in our thread, "
Ways for Small Sites to Compete With Larger SitesGoogle announced that its
Webmaster Tools now shows more detailed search queries.
When a third party takes part of the content of a tweet and uses it in a print media ad, is this ok? In the blurred lines of permission, our thread on the topic, "
Tweets Turned Into Ads In Print MediaLinkedIn has asked a court for orders to allow it to stop people from scraping its servers. Surely, just block them, instead of taking legal action. "
LinkedIn Takes Legal Action To Stop Site Scrapers Stealing Profiles 
One of Yahoo's first announcements of the year was, what it called, a new, unified approach to advertising. The company said, "
The new Yahoo Advertising includes a comprehensive suite of web, mobile, and video ad products across native, audience, and premium display, which are accessible through a new buying platform."
There's something going on with
Google's SERPs, and WebmasterWorld's monthly look at the changes will help identify what's new. Join in our thread with your observations to help us all get a better idea of what's changed.
One of the smaller search engines,
DuckDuckGo, said it answered 1 billion queries in 2013. Although this is a relatively small figure compared to Google and Bing, it's good to know it's alive and well.
Google is spending more of its war chest of funds on
acquiring the home automation company, and thermostat maker, Nest Labs for $3.2 billion.
YouTube has announced a simpler and
easier way to manage user comments now that they are all in one place.
In our thread, "
U.S. Court Rules FCC Cannot Impose Net Neutrality Rules," the announcement has significant implications for everyone using the Internet. How will this affect your bills as users hungry for more and more data download video?
Microsoft says it will
extend security product updates for Windows XP until July 2015. Before you get too excited, or not, it's only for Microsoft Security Essentials, and not for Windows XP itself.
In a topic that rears its head regularly, how do you deal with negative SEO? Do you know whether your site is hit by negative SEO? How would you deal with a threat of extortion over threats of negative SEO? Join in our thread on the this topic. "
Dealing With Negative SEO Threats and Attacks"
Has your Twitter app stopped working? Twitter has said that
API requests are now restricted to SSL/TLS only.
Google has said it is investing
$75 million into a Texas wind energy farm.LinkedIn moves into the
volunteering marketplace with its latest announcement.
Bing announced it has added
speech input to its translator app. 
In an interview with Ryanair boss, he said Google and Ryanair are working on an
airline ticket selling system to "blow comparison sites out of the water" Comparison sites ought to be watching this very closely.
Another report on the extent of the NSA snooping indicates the
NSA accesses computers through radio, with as many as 100,000 computers affected.
The E.U. is starting to get pushy with Google, saying it
must come up with more concessions over anti-trust investigations. Meanwhile,
Google's global privacy counsel says E.U. privacy laws are "flawed"This week we heard that
Yahoo's Chief Operating Officer was fired by Marissa Mayer.We also heard of a report that
Yahoo's Editor-In-Chief has quit.Google announced it was
working on a smart contact lens for glucose measurement to help diabetes sufferers. Interesting, eh! However, it seems Microsoft was also already working on this a few years back.
There's a new
plug-in from Google for WordPress announced this week. It's bound to prove popular.
Google has failed in its attempt to stop a case in the UK going ahead where individuals are suing it over the
Apple Safari tracking permissions. This case is an interesting one and may have significant impact on many other apps, and how they work. Find out more in our thread on the topic.
Have a wonderful week, until next time...
Cheers
Neil
http://www.twitter.com/engineFollow WebmasterWorld on twitter. #webmasterworld or @webmasterworld
WebmasterWorld on Facebook.
WebmasterWorld Weekly Round-Up 17 January
