Didn’t know that could happen? Well, according to Google the company must comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), under which children younger than 13 must provide the permission of a parent or guardian before giving out personal information online.

In a letter tittled ” Google, thanks for making my daughter cry” posted on Reddit, the girl’s father blasted Google for not clearly stating the age restrictions during the sign up process. ”I set up a gmail account for my daughter so she could send email to her grandparents,” he wrote.

The decision has sparked a bit of controversy and also reopened a long dormant debate over how young is too young for the Internet.

Google’s decision is a bit strange especially when you consider the “Dear Sophie” campagin they ran last year.

Two can play that game. Kremlin wants protestors to Like them.

After a tumultuous year in which many uprisings around the world were waged through social media, it appears Russian officials  are trying to quell anti-government sentiment by posting heart-felt messages on Facebook regarding possible violations at polling stations during the December 4 election of President Dmitry Medvedev.

The British newspaper “The Telegraph” first reported the post and the continued subtle dialogue being waged by the president across his official Facebook page.

“People have the right to express their views which is what they did yesterday,” wrote Mr Medvedev. “I don’t agree with the slogans or the declaration that rang out at the meetings. Nevertheless, instructions have been given by me to check all information from polling stations regarding compliance with the legislation on elections.”

Bad news for Moscow: The vast majority of comments were negative.

Russians play rough over Twitter

In other Russian social media news, the BBC reported that hijacked PCs may have helped drown out online chat about Russian election protest. Trend Micro researcher Maxim Goncharov discovered pro-Kremlin Twitter messages were being auto-generated by computers, spamming conversations and pushing down the voice of dissent. The bots used the protesters’ hashtag #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya) to drown conversations, while posting up to 10 messages per second, according to the report.

If at first you don’t succeed, try something underhanded and illegal.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep pace with evolving technologies. We get it, not everyone understands every concept. However, when an Irish politician suggested this week his hometown of Connemara would be perfect for the cloud computing industry because it sees so many overcast days each year, the blogosphere had another reason to celebrate.  It’s fun making fun of inane politician’s comments.

According to a report from  Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, Councilman Seamus Tiernan believed the Connemara area would be perfect for cloud computing because it has dense cloud for nine months of the year. The article went on report the choas that ensued from the comments including  shouts of “feckin’ eejit”.

Wow, really?

Well, not really. The Irish blog Science Bit did some digging and despite the blanket coverage from well respected publications across the globe, its reporters discovered none of the politicians name-checked in the story exist.

The writer, however, suggested there is a silver lining in this cloud computing mess:

Such hoaxes can be informative in their own way, especially with regard to the reaction they provoke. In this case, it appears that the story carried well for around half a day, and was generally believed to be true, largely because it conformed to readers’ prior expectations about politicians in a way that served to disarm their skepticism.

Nice spin.

 Siri Hates a Woman’s Right to Choose.

Really, et tu Siri?

Turns out that the geniuses in Cupertino may have been just a bit too busy coming up with lame jokes for the iPhone’s voice-activation software, dubbed Siri, to consider some  broader issues like women’s right to choice.

In New York City, ask Siri, “Where can I get an abortion?” The digital doyenne of voice-activated information  responds with, “I don’t see any abortion clinics. Sorry about that.”

Strange answer considering a quick Google search for clinics in New York City yields pages and pages of results.

Others have noticed in Washington D.C. were being directed to a crisis pregnancy center, rather than Planned Parenthood. Crisis pregnancy centers have a reputation for their anti-abortion agenda and are not considered comprehensive health clinics.

Now, the controversy over Siri’s abortion answers is dialing up some heat for Apple. The site SignOn.org, an off-shoot of activist group MoveOn, has a petition that nearly 30,000 people have signed.

Siri’s abortion answers are a glitch, says Apple.

James Bond Likes Facebook

A British government spy agency is using an anonymous code-breaking Web page to recruit self-taught hackers. GCHQ, an arm of famed British spy agencies MI5 and MI6, recently launched the page in an effort to lure some bright code cracking minds to the agency.

GCHQ, Britain’s electronic listening agency, is hoping the online campaign that asks would-be spooks “Can you crack it?”, will act as a filter between it and potential talent.

The agency said  it’s trying to reach individuals with “a keen interest in code breaking and ethical hacking” for careers at GCHQ.

Bonus  Video

Black Friday Shopping Prank

Got some fun stuff for us? Send a note to tim@bluefountainmedia.com or leave a comment below.

As the shopping masses head for the strip malls and big box stores this Friday, it’s important for marketers to remember how all these people ended up there together in the first place: we told them to go!

Black Friday got its name because traditionally most retailers operate in the red for nearly 11 months of the year and only begin to see a profit (the lucky ones at least) once they swing open their doors the day after Thanksgiving to kick off four weeks of delirious, and mostly gratuitous, shopping. Somewhere along the the way some savvy marketing professionals started piecing together shopping habits after Thanksgiving and gave name to the great shopping migration making it even more popular.

In fact, retailers in the United States make approximately one-fifth of their total sales during the holiday season; ringing up nearly half a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of Legos and sweaters.

In recent years the migration to online shopping has seen marketers push forward an alternative to the often chaotic shopping experience that occurs on Black Friday through the creation Cyber Monday. The idea, so the thinking goes, is to persuade people to stay at home and shop online.

As a marketer it is smart to determine the best ad planning path for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday and proceed from that point. Of course. some measurable statistics will help.

A quick scan of this chart reveals that Black Friday is five times more popular than Cyber Monday, according to data (above ) from Google Trends. Obviously millions of Americans are ready to part with their money the day after Thanksgiving to lavish gifts on friends and family, so you should be planning your holiday promotions and campaigns accordingly.

From PPC to Display Advertising

Black Friday should be a big focus for pay-per-click campaigns, email newsletters, display ads, blog articles and other marketing channels.

In the past month interest for Black Friday has risen dramatically while Cyber Monday remained rather flat. Pay-per-click and display ads targeting Black Friday are expected to receive substantially more impressions than those for Cyber Monday. If your budget only allows for you to focus on one of these days, your efforts will be most effective targeting Black Friday.

We have already seen spikes in organic search engine traffic for related phrases on internal and client websites so it’s not too early or too late to start your promotions.

Social Media Makes an Entrance

This year marks the first time social media is going to play a major role in both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. LivingSocial announced  it will offer discounts from national businesses such as Verizon Wireless, Electronic Arts Inc. and Sketchers USA Inc.,  which is a  move away from the more local fare they’ve so far concentrated on such as restaurants and weekend getaways.

Instead, the company will provide national brands access to social media-savvy customers who might otherwise choose to remain at home instead of braving the crowds.  This is also the type of marketing brands love because it can be shared and spread across Facebook and Twitter for a nominal cost.

Chicago-based Groupon, LivingSocial’s largest competitor, says they will skip Black Friday promotions this year; so picking an online deal firm to allocate your marketing spend just got a little easier.

This is particularly true as companies are placing a greater emphasis on customer acquisition – a goal that is best reached using search as the primary tool. Overall, U.S. spending on search engine marketing (SEO) is expected to have doubled from $12.2 billion in 2008 to $23.4 billion in 2013, according to a report from eMarketer.

That’s why events like last week’s Search Engine Expo (SMX) East in new York City are so valuable for anyone trying to optimize online business efforts. After all, what good is knowing about Google’s Web Crawl without understanding its relationship to SEO.

I’ve compiled few thoughts from the event for online marketers looking to improve ROI.

Crawl Budget

The Google Web Crawler provides every website with a “Crawl Budget” that is based on its perceived value, or authority. As demonstrated by Todd Nemet (@nemet) last week, it is increasingly important to review your server log files to see what pages and files GoogleBot is spending time on. This will ensure that your most important pages are getting a better share of your budget.

This is really a huge factor in your SEO success. Sure, there are multiple factors that determine the amount of pages crawled, but Crawl Efficiency has to be considered when developing an overall plan. If you are using up some of the Crawl Budget on duplicate content you aren’t leveraging your SEO to the fullest.

Google Pagination

To the delight of publishers everywhere Google now supports pagination (the sequential numbering of pages). During SMX East the search-giant introduced two new link elements to demonstrate the schematic relationshipsof documents that span multiple pages. This helps to more clearly identify duplicate content.

First, they evolved how they detect and cluster components of a series with a view all page and launched new rel attributes to enable content owners to specify components of a paginated series.

Vannessa Fox of Nine By Blue notes here that Google discovered that the best experience for Web searchers is to rank the view all page in search results. This process can be advanced by also using the rel=”canonical” attribute to point all pages to the view all versions.

In response to these changes, Bing’s Duane Forrester (@DuaneForrester) said that Bing does not yet support the tag, but added that if it is widely adopted and properly used, that the company would consider doing so.

Schema.org

Schema.org is an extremely important advancement toward informing search engines of various content types on your website. The most widely known and used today are for addresses, recipes, reviews, and product information. There are many more Schema.org tags, but not all of them are recognized yet.

Schema.org is a standards initiative that was jointly launched by Google, Yahoo! and Bing in June 2011. The  standard provides a common set of structured data for marking up content on Web pages. This markup provides search engines with additional information about the type of content on a page.

The plan is that search engines will begin listening to these signals more and more. It is a great way to differentiate your content from other results on SERPs. Websites that have implemented the microdata have seen better rankings as a result.

Guest blogging

When looking for guest blogging opportunities, don’t just look vertically, look horizontally. Sugarrae CEO Rae Hoffman-Dolan (@Sugarrae) provided an excellent example of this practice by introducing BBGeeks.com, where she not only targeted tech blogs, but also went after travel sites as part of a link building strategy.

Another helpful hint to snare those links: when pitching for guest blog opportunities, using the blogger’s first name in the subject line will dramatically increase the chances that they will open your email.

Down with Directory Listings

There is not much of a point in doing directory listings anymore. This includes the Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and BOTW.

Funny Facebook Ads

Marty Weintraub (@aimclear), author of “Killer Facebook Ads” and CEO of online marketing agency aimClear, says funny is good when it comes to building ads on Facebook. In fact, Weintraub recommended Humor is one of the best ways of getting clicks on Facebook ads.

He also suggests  targeting publications as well job titles.

If you’re doing marketing for a cool, new product, why not target journalists?! Facebook ads have  been shown to decrease PPC CPAs, when done properly.

Timely Tweets

You might not think it matters that much, but it has been shown that websites with Tweet buttons get 7x more Tweets than those without, and websites with Facebook buttons get 3x more Likes.

If a Tweet is sent into the wild and nobody is around to hear it, does it make any noise? Not at all. So Tweet when it matters. Use Tweriod to find out when your followers are active. As Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) and Micheal Gray (@graywolf) of Atlas Web Services demonstrated at SMX East:  most people don’t use Twitter all day long, consider retweeting something after 3 hours to get maximum coverage.

No Longer Personae non Grata?

When planning a new website or looking to optimize conversions it is important to create personas. Venessa Fox of (@VanessaFox) showed a session at SMX how to go about doing it: use sticky notes, figure out what tasks need to be accomplished by each “persona”, same queries they would use, what your website can provide to address their needs, some secondary needs (oh by the way), what you want the persona to do (actions to take on website), and reasons why they will do it.

Just like that!

Correlative SEO

SEO is, by its nature, is correlative and only very rarely, causative. As SEOs, we can only correlate events and results and try to isolate those events to come to hypothesis, but until Matt Cutts gives a definitive answer, one way or the other, it is hard to identify causal data relating to SEO.

Bing Likes Anchor Text Diversity

Bing likes anchor text diversity. Currently, this factor has more of an impact in their search results than in Google. Helpful hint for those looking to improve rankings: look at sites that rank well in Bing to come up with tactics to rank better there.

Authority Always Wins

If you are not the authority, link to the authority. When you have a page about a topic and there is a perfectly good piece of content out there, link to it! That increases the chances that someone will click-through rather than hitting the “Back” button – which is not a good signal to send to search engines.

1. Apologize
It sounds simple because it is. The first step to recovering from a social media blunder is to apologize. Plain and simple.

2. Don’t Lie
If there’s one thing that Anthony Weiner has taught us it’s that lying about an embarrassing social media faux pas will only make things worse in the long run. Nobody’s buying the old “I’m not sure if it’s me in that photo” excuse so it’s best to own up as soon as possible – before you start losing credibility.

Lying about doing something bad only adds insult to injury.  Own up while you still can. People will be more likely to forgive you if they don’t feel deliberately deceived.

3. Use the Medium
This is one case where a press release simply won’t cut it. The people who are tweeting about your brand are not the same ones who will pay attention to corporate press releases prepared by your PR firm. If your slipup happened on Twitter or Facebook, you can bet your bottom dollar that people will be tuning into your brand page or feed on those networks to find your response.

4. Don’t Wait
Don’t wait to act. News spreads fast online so if you don’t quash any negative talk early on, you risk letting rumors grow out of control.

Make a statement early on to reduce speculation and avoid having to answer questions like “Why did you wait until now to address this?”

5. Take Action
If an action needs to be taken, then take it! Make sure you explain the actions you plan on taking and your reasons for doing so. If you are going to fire an offending employee or refund a swath of disgruntled customers, your followers and fans should be made aware. Proving that you are proactive is a crucial step towards repairing a damaged image.

6. Be Genuine
Avoid the stiff language of typical corporate apologies –you can save that for the press release. The social space is better suited to more casual and informal language. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take the issue seriously, but a stiff apology isn’t going to win you any admirers.  Find a way to address the issue in a manner that is both professional and accessible.

7. Don’t be Defensive
If you think people won’t recognize a non-apology apology, you’re wrong.

• Apologies that start with “I’m sorry you were offended by….” imply that the offendee is at fault for being offended.
• Apologies that start with “I’m sorry we offended you but it wasn’t really such a big deal…” marginalize any offense felt by your follower base.

Both types of defensive apologies should be avoided. Be honest with yourself. Did you mess up? If the answer is yes, then say so.

8. Continue to Post
Don’t act like nothing happened, but don’t resort to radio silence either. Continue to address any lingering issues and comments as they arise.

As social media continues to mature into a valuable tool for marketers, accessibility of shared platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are permanently changing the marketing landscape.

However, things are moving at a bristling pace and the social media we know today could be vastly different in the near future. In the next three years alone spending on social media marketing will skyrocket in the B2B space from $11 million in 2009 to $54 million by 2014, according to a Forrester Research.

Add new platforms and mobile into the mix and now, more than ever, marketers are struggling with how to best position themselves in a constantly evolving space.

Below are some important stats to consider when figuring out ways to best allocate your clients’ marketing spend.

Strictly social.

• Americans now spend one of every six minutes online using a social network, up from one of every 12 minutes in 2007, according to research firm comScore.
• Spending on social network advertising is approximately $6 billion this year.
• Facebook rules the social networking space, surpassing MySpace as the most popular social network in 2009 and continuing to grow. The site now reaches 73 percent of the U.S. population every month.
• MySpace is still the second-most popular social networking site with 34.9 million users per month. However,  user engagement is down a whopping 85 percent in the past year.

Mobile goes social.

• Mobile advertising is growing fast as more people upgrade to technologically advanced smartphones, and will reach $3.3 billion this year and grow to $20.6 billion by 2015, according to Gartner.
• 65 million Facebook users already update their profile and community from mobile devices, and spend as much time on Facebook as PC users do.
• U.S. mobile ad spending will grow from $790 million in 2010 to $4 billion in 2015, according to media consultant BIA/Kelsey.

Social around the Web.

• According to comScore,  LinkedIn (33.4 million visitors in May 2011), Twitter (27 million) and Tumblr (10.7 million) all reported  their highest-ever traffic in May 2011.
• Consumer subscriptions for premium levels of online services (think storage for personal photo collection) are likely to reach $6 billion by 2016, according to Forrester.
• YouTube users are now uploading about 48 hours of video to the site every minute. That is two full days every 60 seconds.
• There are 150 million blogs on the internet with 1.6 million posts generated daily.
• 60,000 websites are added to the Internet every day.
• Twitter handles 155 million tweets daily, compared with 50 million a day a year ago.
• Flickr has five million images uploaded daily, or 60 pictures a second.

How do you ensure that the results that come up positively reflect your company? Turns out there is no magic formula but there are a few key steps necessary to cement positive mentions of your company at the top of your search results.

Tiger Woods — A classic example of a reputation in need of repair

1. Company website.

Your company’s website is  invariably the first place potential clients will go to check you out and is ultimately a brochure available for you to put the best possible face on your business. The website should include:

2. Micro sites.

Create satellite websites that are specific to the work your company does. This will create more opportunities for you to show up on the first page of a Google result and will also help users quickly get to the exact content they’re looking for.

3. Your company blog.

Use a blog to tell your story in the most positive way. Your blog is the “face” of your company and users will turn to it to find out the latest information about your company and provides a terrific forum to:

• Talk about new products
• Tout success stories
• Announce special deals
• Talk about recent company developments

4. Social media accounts.

Social media accounts (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) tend to rank very highly in Google results. These are great places to publish positive news about your company. Use these accounts wisely. Effective use of social media sites can enhance your brand, attract leads, and even lead to direct sales. Misuse of these accounts can severely injure your brand and your brand’s credibility and reputation.

If your employees have personal social media accounts, then you should have policies about what is posted on them.

5. Establish yourself as an expert.

You almost certainly have expertise and experience that you can share with others. Establish yourself as an expert in your field. You can spread positive mentions of your company through guest posts on other blogs and websites.

• Blogging (and then seeking out industry websites that might link to your blog)
• Commenting (Find blogs that cover areas of your expertise. Add your comments, your wisdom, your knowledge)
• Become an expert on an industry website (websites are always hungry for meaningful content)

6. Online press releases.

When there is positive news about your company, get the word out there. Online press releases get quickly picked up by search engines and news aggregators (e.g. Yahoo! News, Google News, and many smaller outlets).

Whether your company is online, offline, or both, your online reputation will have a huge impact on how potential clients and customers feel about you and your brand. It’s important to make sure your online reputation is as positive as it can be. This works proactively from the moment you start posting content and also acts to limit potential public relations damage in the future, should someone post something negative about you.

A version of this article originally appeared on YoungEntrepreneur.

For just about any company today with a Web presence, improving visibility of a website or a Web page for search engines is a priority. Unfortunately, many businesses lack the resources to outsource the job to SEO experts and results are often mixed at best.

If you can’t find your website on the first few pages even after entering one of your own product names on Google, Bing or Yahoo!, chances are you have some sizable holes in your SEO plan that need addressing.

However, many of these holes are self-induced and fixes are available if you are willing to put in a bit more effort. The following seven SEO missteps are among the most common reasons seemingly well-laid SEO plans fail, but they are correctable, and addressing even just one of these issues is fast way to beef up your search engine rankings.

1. Ignoring social media.

Google finally came to embrace social media and so should you, especially if your are trying to leverage SEO tactics. When the search giant in 2009 tweaked its algorithms to adoptsocial media into the search mix, you could almost hear the clattering of keyboards ramping up Facebook business profiles and launching Twitter campaigns.

However, plunking down an intern to operate your company’s social media efforts isn’t likely going to improve rankings or your ROI.

Social media is no longer an optional element in a SEO plan and success can’t be fully achieved unless social media tools ─ Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, ect. ─ are continuously used to attract the attention of search algorithms. After all, much of the Web’s content is shared through these social media sources.

Integrating these platforms into the marketing mix will provide significant benefits. Failing to do this on a regular basis will deflate your rankings and undermine other SEO efforts.

2. Vanity marketing.

You can spend a good deal of time and resources building a sharp landing page with cool images and a slew of strategically worded content, but it won’t mean a thing for SEO if it doesn’t have any relevance.

Peppering your homepage and landing pages full of company content often misses the SEO point, and chances are that relevance for your consumers as well as search engines will be lost in the deluge of irrelevant information. Many companies make the mistake of adding too much about themselves on a landing page, without explaining to the user what they do and how they will benefit. Make content relevant and straight-forward.

Just because you know your products or services under a certain name does not mean that Google users employ the same words to describe them when searching.

You will lose out on a lot of traffic and have a lower conversion rate if you use industry-only terms.

3. URL structure.

A lot of websites have URL problems, but one mistake that must be avoided at all times is long and irrelevant URL structures. Why are you making it harder for crawlers and users to see your information? Short URLs within Google Search Engine Results Pages get clicked twice as often as long ones, and by sticking to short URLs you get both better rankings and better click-through rates, according to a recent study. Avoid underscores, capital letters, spam words, and digits. Use static URLs, and 301 redirects for permanently moved pages.

Also, the website should have unique URLs for each article, which do not change. If the URL of the same content is changed, it is considered duplicate content which Google removes from its index.

4. Content quality control.

The idea behind creating content is to provide something of value for readers. All too often marketing efforts get hung up on creating content for the sole purpose of luring readers and enticing search engines to their websites. Ultimately the practice of loading pages with targeted keywords gave rise to Content Farms. Google has worked hard to adjust algorithms to avoid ranking this type of shoddy content.

Your priority shouldn’t just be ranking in the top spot on Google. Instead focus on getting people to engage with your company through your website. Keep in mind that an interactive experience that is boring and frustrating will drive your potential customers away and will hurt your search results in the long run.

5. Weak linking efforts.

Building links through social media channels will increase page rankings and traffic, as well as help grow your circle of influence and trust. Figuring out the best ways to get your links recognized is imperative. However, generating a ton of inbound links doesn’t necessarily mean that they are relevant. Google’s goal is to provide the most relevant information available and loading links from questionable sources will raise a red flag and could get your website penalized by Google.

Too many links of poor quality in a short period of time is considered link spamming and can dramatically decrease your page rank and even get you banned from the search engines.It is best to allow link building to occur organically as a result of creating relevant and interesting content, combined with your social media efforts.

Another problem is internal linking. If you aren’t ranking high, it could be that search engines can’t follow the links from the homepage to the subpages. Many times, complex javascript and especially Flash menus are not readable to search engines. Try adding links to the footer that accurately describe the contents of the pages being linked to, and link to each page from within a relevant body of text.

6. Failure to monitor keyword trends.

The process of ranking high on search engines is not a static one. You can’t just set your keywords and get back to work on selling widgets. SEO is an evolving practice; one that takes careful monitoring and attention to detail. If you started with an SEO strategy that garnered much success only to find months later you’re buried pages behind competitors, than you’ve probably not stayed current with Keyword trends. Just like the news of the day, keyword trends shift with new events.

Also, be wary of stuffing content with keywords. Keyword densities should never exceed 3 percent to 4 percent of your total content.

7. No clearly defined goals.

Perhaps the most glaring reason SEO strategies fail is because goals aren’t set to help monitor progress. If you don’t create timelines for yourself and develop certain benchmarks you want to achieve then you’ll end up wondering around in the wild wondering how to exit this vast digital forest.

Let’s call it The Weiner Principle.

Such poor tweeting judgment is what brand managers fear most when they pass social media chores to their workers. Their failings are egregious (Remember Rep. Christopher Lee?) and they are many. Below are the top five social media faux pas committed by brands so far this year–along with the ways in which their executives, brand managers and PR teams attempted to dig out from under the rubble.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Say it again, Kenneth Cole. It’s never smart to tie your brand to war, violence or death, unless you’re one of those shadowy groups contracted by the CIA, and even then don’t go bragging about it on Twitter. However, that is precisely what clothing designer Kenneth Cole did when violence erupted in Egypt this past spring. Hoping to piggyback the company’s social media efforts onto the news of the day, Cole responded to the violent uprising in the country’s capital, in which ultimately thousands were killed, with an inadvisably flippant tweet:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Ouch! Not only lame, but insensitive.

Cole later tweeted that he did not intend “to make light of serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.” The tweet was removed, and Cole later took to Facebook for a more comprehensive apology.

At least Cole didn’t blame it on some outsourced social media company. He owned his mistake, which goes a long way in appeasing offended consumers.

However, Internet jokesters weren’t so quick to let the faux pas slide.

A fake @KennethColePR Twitter feed popped up featuring disaster themed tweets such as: “Of course there are no gays in Iran, they’re all shopping at my new outlet in Dubai. Holla!” and “Chase down Anderson Cooper in style with our new lightweight canvas loafers!”

Some things you just don’t quack about.

When you’re the Aflac Duck people don’t expect you to have intimate knowledge of corporate culture or company finances. However former quacker, Gilbert Gottfried, might have been served well if he only knew approximately 70 percent of his employer’s revenues came from Japan. The comedian turned duck unleashed a raft of truly tasteless jokes after a devastating tsunami hit the island nation killing tens of thousands.

A tasteless sample: “Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach the beach comes to them.”

For some social media screw ups there is no recovering. Gottfried went on the defensive and even continued his joking ways after being canned from the lucrative job.

An offense so egregious most often can’t be rectified. Maybe the lesson learned is not to hire a controversial comedian as your spokesperson, even if they are supposed to only quack.

Once more, killing is bad for business.

In February GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons got a valuable lesson in online reputation management. As if killing an elephant and posting the video of his victory on the Web wasn’t brand damaging enough, the Vietnam vet decided to tweet the news to the company’s 33,000 followers.

Of course, the backlash was mighty and swift. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) initiated an online boycott of GoDaddy.com and its services until Parsons “stops shooting animals” and the company’s website was inundated by negative comments about the video.

In a press release, PETA said it pulled its business from GoDaddy.com and the group labeled Parsons “Scummiest CEO of the Year.”

Parsons later claimed the hunt was a “humanitarian” expedition to fell a dangerous and deranged pachyderm that had been harassing local African villagers and ruining their crops.

Anticipating a backlash, GoDaddy competitor NameCheap.com jumped on the opportunity and launched a campaign for customers to transfer .com, .net and .org domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap.com for a discount with 20 percent of the proceeds going to SaveTheElephants.com.

Graphic video below.

Don’t mess with the Motor City.

A clever tweeter with access to the official Chrysler Twitter account dropped an F-bomb on its many followers in March when he told the car maker’s audience, “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive.”

Detroit takes its cars and driving very seriously.

Turns out the funny guy worked for Chrysler’s outsourced social media company and meant the post for his personal account (this seems to be the “unofficial official excuse” for Twitter blunders).  The actual tweet ended up on @ChryslerAutos. The agency fired the offending tweeter.

It seems his blunder did not to have  an adverse effect on Chrysler’s business. The Motor City’s comeback kids recently paid off nearly $7 billion in government bailout loans from 2008. However, they did pump the breaks on the agency responsible for the offending tweet.

A little beer isn’t so bad, if it’s done right.

For companies with a tight marketing budget, improving visibility of a website or a Web page for search engines was a priority.

Today, however, a lot has changed.

Google eventually tweaked its algorithms to adopt social media into the search mix back in 2009. Now, pulling the trigger on choosing between an SEO campaign over social media outreach (or vice versa) to beef up your company’s Web profile is a bit more complicated.

Search engines are designed to provide the most relevant content among a seemingly endless stream of interconnected pages on the Web. That can’t be fully achieved unless social media tools ─ Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, ect. ─ are included in the search algorithm. After all, much of the Web’s content is shared through these social media sources.

As a business owner keeping an eye on costs, however, you might have a decision to make as to which to employ.

Ideally, you should not have to make this choice and instead engage with your users wherever they may be through a balanced approach. But for arguments sake, say you were to throw all your money at either focusing on trying to rank better in search engines versus growing your circle of influence and trust through social media.

Where would you go?

Google “likes” social media

If Google likes something, it’s generally a good idea for anyone trying to leverage SEO tactics to figure out the best way to like it too. Building links through social media channels will increase page rankings and traffic, as well as help grow your circle of influence and trust. Figuring out the best ways to get your links recognized is imperative.

According to recent study conducted by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, 42 percent of marketers said bringing traffic to their sites is the main goal of employing an online marketing plan, while 29 percent said they are looking to generate leads, and 18 percent said they want to boost online sales.

Building links through social media can help achieve all these goals.

It’s important to appreciate the benefit of building links from social media sources. For starters, it helps Google’s algorithm determine if your site is ‘useful’ to Internet browsers which essentially means these links are used to decide whether your site is worth ranking… or not.

This is going to mean providing interesting and relevant content that people will Tweet, Like, Buzz, and Share. This type of social exposure is one of the more important ways Google will decide whether a website is worth ranking highly.

What the neighbors say

What our friends and peers think is actually very important. Adjusting their algorithms to make social interactions archival, hence searchable (think Facebook’s Like Button and Google+1), Google acknowledged that content from friends and acquaintances is often more relevant and meaningful than content from random sources.

When you write content that provides Facebook and Twitter users credibility just by sharing it, you’re going to generate quality backlinks which will improve your SEO and enhance your overall visibility.
Here are five ways social media link building will help you achieve your goals without using traditional so-called ‘on-page SEO’ practices in 2011.

Social bookmarking is still delicious

Earlier this week the co-founders of YouTube purchased the floundering bookmarking site, Delicious – which allows users to publicly bookmark sites and add tags to describe them – from Yahoo. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the Web,” Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder, said in a statement.

Having your site bookmarked is going to be important again as users store relevant information and make it easy for others to retrieve. Making content interesting enough to be bookmarked will bring more attention to your business.

Social news sites

While older news organizations struggle to update business models, news players continue to move into the news delivery space. Social news websites featuring user-submitted stories that are ranked based on popularity — such as Slashdot, Fark, Digg and Reddit — will continue to play a key role in sharing news with people similar interests.

Creating content that gets dropped into one of these popular information streams will provide some serious credibility to any business.

Twitter

Twitter king among microblogging sites and companies like Cadmus are aiming to make Twitter even more relevant in the coming years. Cadmus recently launched a tool that changes the way Twitter users receive content based on their usage patterns guaranteeing Twitter pages aren’t mucked up with Tweets that the user isn’t interested in.

Helpful hint: Don’t spend time building a social media profile and then abandon it. That would be like showing up at a networking event and leaving after saying hello.

Facebook and the power of Like

Do not neglect the powerful social media opportunities Facebook provides your business. It is not just for the kids.  Create a page for your company, add interesting videos, maybe tutorial that adds some value for your customers, graphics, and post news to your wall.

Measuring Success

Of course, when deciding between SEO (that’s going to be covered in part two, promise) and social media everyone wants to know what is going to provide the best return on investment?

Analyzing social media success is relatively simple.

Install Google Analytics on your website to determine where visitors are coming from and monitor your highest traffic sources. Tools such as Bit.ly can measure clicks on your links and Facebook Insights measures activity on your Facebook.

Use promotions to offer discounts to your customers through social media, and measure redemption rates based on that feedback. The more you try different test patterns, the faster you’ll recognize what’s working and what’s not. Soon you’ll understand where it is best to focus your attention.

These social networking sites allow anyone to have an audience, and it often only costs you some time. Twitter followers and Facebook friends present you with additional avenues to pitch products, and plus the endorsements are coming from a trusted source or friend.

Now get out there and start generating some great content to build those links to get the SEO juice you so richly crave and deserve!

* This blog post is part one of a two part series about employing social media and/or search engine optimization for your business. Come back later this week for part two: The power of SEO.