Welcome to the ineedhits Search Engine Marketing blog, where we share the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advise.

As the economic downturn continues to impact marketing budgets, more small businesses have turned to alternative marketing methods such as embracing social media.
According to results from the small business success index, levels of social media adoption increased from 12 percent to 24 percent over the past 12 months.
The research identified that around one in five small businesses owners are using social media in their business, which…
There’s nothing like rumours of a new Google tool launch to get the industry tongues wagging, and today there’s lots of hype building.
According to the grapevine, Google is on the verge (potentially even today) of releasing a new social app or toolwhich is believed to involved social networking and Gmail.
As there has been no official talk or leaks from the Google office, we’re left to industry…

The end of 2009 saw the search engine world abuzz with talk of real time search. Microblogging platforms such as twitter the main driver behind the movement.
So as 2010 settles in, most of the major search players have started their real time search integration in one form or another, but it’s the Twitter integration that’s the prime focus at the moment.
Twitter’s meteoric rise in popularity has…
Google is the first to tell us that links from relevant and important sites are always a great way to get more traffic and increase your ranking in the search engines. But what about links from new platforms such as Twitter and Facebook?
Popular Googler (and recently clean shaven) Matt Cutts shared his thoughts in a recent video below.
Google treats links the same irrespective of where they…
It’s pretty safe to say that the buzz throughout the latter half of 2009 surrounded real-time search.
With Google rolling out real-time search results into its regular results page in early December, there is now even greater opportunity to get more exposure for your business.
So, how can you get found in real-time searches?
It’s all about Twitter & Facebook, so here are some tips that will get you on…

Nielsen have shared their predictions for the advertising market in 2010, with smartphone and social networking advertising set to provide new sales channels.
Here’s a look at their top 5 trends from the Nielsen blog:

Most of the talk recently from Microsoft has been around Bing, but what about the MSN portal? Have they forgotten about it? The answer is no, it has actually just undergone a cool new facelift.
The MSN portal is one of the top 5 most visited sites on the net (about 100 million visitors per month) and seeing as though it’s been 5 years since its last…
Last week, Google announced it is now using RSS and Atom Feeds to find and index new web pages on the internet.
Historically Google has relied on URL submission and links on other web pages as its primary way to find new online content. Using these submissions and links, Google’s spiders crawl and index the relevant content it uncovers.
RSS and Atom Feeds aren’t new, having come to prominence…

Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, FriendFeed & Flickr are all pretty common names in the social networking world, but now social and search are about to combine thanks to Google.
At the Web 2.0 expo last week, Google’s Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer surprised everyone with the announcement that Social Search is coming via Google Labs.
This new search feature will allow you to see search query results from people…

Although it’s all very new, there has been a lot of talk lately about real-time search and how it will impact your search results. Now real-time search has become even more of a reality with the announcement of a partnership between Twitter and Google which gives Google access to Twitters full feed of public tweets.
From the official Google post:
We believe that our search results and user…