Samsung pays Apple $1 Billion sending 30 trucks full of 5 cent coins

30 trucks full of 5 cent coins!

Lawsuit Paid In Full: Samsung pays Apple $1 Billion sending 30 trucks full of 5 cent coins!

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

The funny part is that the signed document does not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send the creators of the iPhone their billion dollars in the way they deem best.

This dirty but genius geek troll play is a new headache to Apple executives as they will need to put in long hours counting all that money, to check if it is all there and to try to deposit it crossing fingers to hope a bank will accept all the coins.

Lee Kun-hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, told the media that his company is not going to be intimidated by a group of “geeks with style” and that if they want to play dirty, they also know how to do it.

You can use your coins to buy refreshments at the little machine for life or melt the coins to make computers, that’s not my problem, I already paid them and fulfilled the law.

A total of 20 billion coins, delivery hope to finish this week.

Let’s see how Apple will respond to this. This only goes to show the sense of humor of Asians. Very clever marketing move. You just got $1 Billion Asian market excited.

Samsung pays Apple $1 Billion sending 30 trucks full of 5 cent coins | The Red Elephant

Mark Zuckerberg Was Highest Paid U.S. CEO of 2012

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg was by far the highest paid public CEO in the United States last year, according to a new report.

The Facebook CEO’s total compensation for 2012 was nearly $2.3 billion, more than twice that of the next-highest paid CEO, according to GMI Ratings, which analyzed compensation for more than 2,000 CEOs of publicly traded companies.

Almost all of Zuckerberg’s compensation for the year comes from income related to Facebook’s IPO. On the day Facebook went public, Zuckerberg exercised 60 million stock options worth nearly $2.3 billion (though much of it was used to cover his taxes). He also received a base salary of $500,000 for the year, though starting this year, his salary changed to the symbolic $1 a year.

Richard Kinder, CEO of energy company Kinder Morgan, was second on the list with a total compensation of $1.1 billion. Other tech execs cracked the top 10 list as well, including Apple CEO Tim Cook (with $143 million) and Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff (with $109 million).

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with more than 1 billion users. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 while he was an undergraduate computer science student at Harvard University.

Then called “thefacebook.com,” the site was an instant hit.  Now, nine years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world. The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly.  A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them.

This allegation soon bloomed into a full-fledged lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal odyssey that continues to 4 years ago.

New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints against Mark Zuckerberg are valid.  It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook’s servers to break into Facebook members’ private email accounts and read their emails–at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company’s systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful.

The primary dispute around Facebook’s origins centered around whether Mark had entered into an “agreement” with the Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate named Divya Narendra, to develop a similar web site for them — and then, instead, stalled their project while taking their idea and building his own.

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Mark Zuckerberg Was Highest Paid U.S. CEO of 2012 | The Red Elephant

Facebook Removes Search Privacy – Say Good-Bye to Anonymity on Facebook

Good bye the privacy on Facebook!

As you may or may not know, Facebook previously gave users the option to hide their names from public search. This meant that users who wanted complete privacy could opt to have their name hidden from Facebook’s search field. Well, over the next few weeks, this option will no longer be available as facebook removes search privacy. Facebook will be removing the search privacy on your personal timeline. In fact, for the past year Facebook has been silently removing the ‘who can look up your timeline by name’ option for those who were not already using it. If you are one of the small percentage of Facebook users who opted to keep your name hidden from search, you should soon receive an alert at the top of your timeline letting you know about this change.

Facebook removes search privacy?

So, why is this option being nixed? According to Facebook, the change is necessary to avoid confusion and to help users get the most out of Graph Search. “The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited. For example, it didn’t prevent people from navigating to your Timeline by clicking your name in a story in News Feed, or from a mutual friend’s Timeline. Today, people can also search Facebook using Graph Search (for example, “People who live in Seattle,”) making it even more important to control the privacy of the things you share rather than how people get to your Timeline.”

What if I want to stay hidden on Facebook?

Most of us won’t even notice the removal of this setting. However for those of you who have, for whatever reason, been using Facebook semi-anonymously, don’t be surprised when you start receiving more and more friend requests in the coming weeks! So what do you do if you want to continue to stay completely hidden on Facebook? Well, unfortunately there’s really no way to do this within Facebook’s terms of service. Since Facebook requires you to provide your real name and information when you register, using a pseudonym would be a violation of Facebook’s policies. There are a couple of ways, however, you can keep a handle on your privacy, even though your name will now be searchable.

Privacy Shortcuts

1.   Make sure only friends can see your future posts. The most important privacy setting you’ll want to check is ‘Who can see my stuff’. To make sure only friends can see what you post, go to the ‘Privacy Shortcuts’ tab at the top right of your page (click on the little padlock icon). From here you’re able to select who will see your future posts.

2. Make sure only friends can see your old posts. With the impending changes to Graph Search, it’s more important than ever that you double-check the visibility of your past posts. To change the audience settings for your past posts, you’ll need to access the regular privacy  settings tab (this option is not available through privacy shortcuts). To access privacy settings, simply click on the gear icon at the top right hand corner of your screen. If you’d like to review your past posts on a case-by-case basis, you will need to, unfortunately, scroll through all your past posts and change the audience on each post. However, if you would like to simply make sure all your posts are searchable only by friends, there’s a way to do this with one click: click ‘Limit Past Posts’. This will change all the content on your timeline that you’ve shared with friends of friends or public to friends.

Privacy Settings and Tools

Facebook Removes Search Privacy – Say Good-Bye to Anonymity on Facebook | The Red Elephant

How Twitter DM Will Impact Brand Marketing

Twitter’s Inbox

As news broke that Twitter is rolling out a new option for its Direct Message (Twitter DM) feature, reactions ranged from indifference to downright panic.

A Twitter user reported that Twitter plans to let users opt in to receive DMs from anyone, regardless whether that person follows back or not. Traditionally, two users had to mutually follow each other for DM to work. Now that no longer has to be the case.

If you don’t see this setting in your account, that’s because the feature isn’t available to everyone yet (although it appears that some have had the option since late 2011).

Early analyses tend to conclude that this move is good for brands, good for spammers and bad for consumers. I see myself straddling both the brand marketer and consumer worlds. As a business owner, I welcome any opportunity to connect with customers and potential customers. As an everyday Twitter user, I’d prefer if my DM inbox wasn’t flooded with spam (more than it already is).

Twitter DM: The Impact on Customer Service

This new change will benefit brands that use Twitter as a customer service channel. By allowing their accounts to accept DMs from anyone, brands can receive private customer service messages from customers, without having to first follow them. That may prevent customers from broadcasting their frustrations publicly, not to mention their sensitive account information. This could greatly benefit larger brands that receive thousands of daily requests via Twitter.

For airlines, cable companies and other industries with high numbers of service complaints, this new feature also lets brands move a complaint or other conversation offline as soon as possible. I imagine customers may benefit here as well, as some people may prefer to use Twitter as their communication channel, but don’t necessarily want to be publicly followed by Brand X, Y or Z.

DM The Impact on Spammers

To Twitter’s credit, the company made this change an opt-in feature. If you are happy with the status quo, you don’t have to change a thing. I imagine most Twitter users (at least, the non-branded accounts) will not opt in to receive DMs from unknown users.

However, for those users and brands who do switch over, spam could become an issue. Unscrupulous spammers may have an easier time reaching the DM inboxes of brands and company accounts. That means users will have to exercise extra security caution when opening DM links.

DM The Impact on Marketing

While the new DM feature’s impact on customer service is easy to grasp, its application for marketers is yet unclear. My business rarely uses DMs as is. If someone is looking for information or has a specific question, it’s better for us to send a public tweet in response. That way, the hashtags and discussion thread can be located by anyone else looking for advice on a similar topic. The very beauty of Twitter lies in its public nature; that’s what sets it apart from Facebook, LinkedIn and email. There’s no reason to hide many of these conversations.

However, there may be occasional situations where a business prefers to communicate privately via Twitter. For example, a brand may want to send an exclusive coupon code to its top customers, without broadcasting the action to its entire community.

Likewise, a marketer may want to pitch a journalist with an embargoed piece of news or story idea. Twitter may be that journalist’s preferred communication channel, but as a marketer, you can’t exactly expect reporters or editors to follow you. Now marketers can privately contact journalists via Twitter (provided the journalist has opted in).

Bottom Line

As a newer and smaller company, ours will be opting in to receive DMs from anyone. After all, if a customer wants to reach out to us through this avenue, we don’t want to shut off the opportunity. Twitter’s change may help open the service for better access and communication, but time will tell whether it becomes a hassle.

These days Twitter has become the preferred communication channel for many, serving as a remedy to the overuse and abuse of email. As DM becomes closer in line with email functionality, will the DM inbox become just as cluttered? Will it become overwhelmed with spam? Will users start to look for a cleaner, less cluttered option elsewhere?

How Twitter DM Will Impact Brand Marketing | The Red Elephant

Don’t Miss These 25 Digital Media Resources

If this week’s tech news was off your radar… we’ve got you covered with the best 25 Digital Media Resources. The team at Mashable has rounded up the top 25 digital media resources for your reading pleasure. Skim through for articles on nearly impossible mobile games to beat and nine manufacturers who figured out the secrets of tweeting.

Editor’s Picks, Digital Media Resources

• Now and Then: 10 Classic Video Games That Got a Major Upgrade
  See how far gaming has come when you look at these side-by-side comparisons of retro video games and their modern counterparts.
• 5 Ways Cities Are Using Big Data
  Big data’s kind of a big deal. Here’s how a few cities are using mass information to make their residents’ lives a little easier.
• 7 Music Discovery Tools to Find New Tunes
  If you’re on the lookout for new tunes, try these seven websites and apps for social-music discovery.
• How to Follow Facebook Across Social Media
  If you’re interested in getting all Facebook news, updates and other content in your social stream, then take a look at our guide to all the various accounts you should be liking, following and bookmarking.
• 10 Moments on Twitter That Will Go Down in History
  These 10 key moments highlight important changes in how Twitter has been viewed and used.

Tech

• The 6 Best Launchers to Turn Your Android Into an iPhone
  Here are six great launchers to make your Android device look more like an iPhone.
• 5 iOS Settings to Limit Your Child’s Mobile Usage
  Here are five tips on how to use the built-in iOS restrictions to prevent your kids from making a big mess with your Apple device.
• 6 Creative Hacks for Your Smartphone
  If you’re looking for easy ways to customize your phone without jailbreaking or rooting it, try these hacks and tricks.
• The 10 Most Beautiful Mobile Games
  Great graphics don’t necessarily make a beautiful mobile game. Check out these 10 games that focus on more than visuals.
• 10 Cute iPhone Cases for Couples
  To show the world just how synced-up the two of you are, we found an adorable selection of precious pairs of cases that are perfect for couples.
• 24 Essential Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools
  We’ve compiled a list of mind-mapping tools to help you organize, summarize and visualize information.
• What to Remove First When Your Phone Storage Is Full
  Not enough storage space on your phone? Here’s what you should get rid of first.
• How to Create Tilt-Shift in Photoshop
  Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to create tilt-shift miniature fakes with just a few effects in Photoshop.
• 6 Tricks for Instantly Looking Better in Photoshop
  Need a new profile picture? Use these Photoshop tricks to make your pic fashion magazine-worthy.
• 7 Bright Ways to Use Your iPhone’s LED Light
  Seven fun and practical ways to use the iPhone LED light on the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 for parties, music, and everyday life.
• 10 Nearly Impossible Mobile Games
  Want a challenge on the go? These mobile games will frustrate and intrigue even the most hardcore gamers.

Business

• Thrillist: From a Simple Newsletter to $80 Million in Revenue
  Ben Lerer and Adam Rich have taken their vision from a simple email newsletter to the multi-brand content and commerce company, Thrillist.
• The Anatomy of the World’s Top CEOs
  What do the world’s 100 top-performing CEOs have in common? Check out this infographic to find out.
• How Tech Companies Prepare for Life After the IPO
  A looming IPO can mean extreme changes in the office. Here are how some tech companies have dealt with the pressure.
• Why Native Advertising Is the Opposite of Porn
  Here’s why native advertising is the opposite of porn.
• Is It Cool to Work for Yahoo Now?
  In the Marissa-Mayer era, Yahoo is transforming its image as an out-of-touch 90s relic by reworking its flagship web products — Yahoo.com, Yahoo News, Yahoo Mail and more — for the current decade.
• 9 Manufacturers Doing It Right on Twitter
  The manufacturing industry has a wide-casting net of sectors, jobs and companies. Here are nine manufacturers on Twitter worth your follow.

Lifestyle

• How One Woman Grappled With Grief Through Gaming
  When things couldn’t get worse, Ramona Pringle turned to World of Warcraft for therapeutic escape. Now, she’s sharing what she’s learned through an interactive app.
• 9 Lifelogging Apps to Log Personal Data
  Want to keep track of your life for posterity, or just get to know your personal habits better? Try these lifelogging apps.
• 14 Nerdy Places Where You Can Get Your Geek On
  A list of places and events all around the United States geared towards nerd and geek culture.

Don’t Miss These 25 Digital Media Resources | The Red Elephant

Control Your House From Your Smartphone With Revolv for iOS

Control your house with home Revolv

As futuristic as it may still sound, syncing up your home’s appliances and controlling them with your mobile device is science fact, not science fiction. Several products are on the market, but a new one stands out because it not only links up your whole house, Revolv works in unison with your existing automated systems.

In July, Revolv (revolv.com), a Colorado company incubated out of the startup accelerator TechStars, announced pre-sales for Smart Home Solution, which makes your entertainment system, wireless lighting, automated locks, and thermostat all accessible and controllable via your iPhone or iPad.

Home Revolv

For a one-time fee of $299 you get a Wi-Fi hub and access to Revolv’s cloud service. You don’t need an ethernet cable to link up. Just take the hub home and plug it into an outlet. It automatically connects to your Wi-Fi network and discovers all the wireless gadgets you’ve already installed in your home. You can manually add extras, and then turn appliances on or off from your mobile device. Revolv is only available for Apple products, but Android compatibility is on the way.

So what can you do with your new toy? Automate daily routines, like turning on appliances at set times, or use the service’s GPS proximity and sensor triggers to automatically activate your devices. Revolv knows when you’re close to your home because it tracks your geo-radius to the house. But, for once, being tracked may actually help you: You can program relaxing music to play before you step through the door — or set the oven to pre-heat so you can get a jump-start on dinner.

You can also mix and match devices and brands, so don’t worry if you have different products, like Sonos wireless speakers or Belkin’s WeMo home automation system. The only feature needed for a device to communicate with Revolv is wireless capability.

This functionality is what makes Revolv stand out from other home automation options already on the market. Many autonomous systems, while tying together appliances, don’t work together.

Mike Soucie, Revolv’s co-founder, says the idea was driven by peoples’ desire to have more control over their home, and the products in them. “Revolv isn’t trying to make the hardware business obsolete.” He says “he wants to simplify things and bring the power of the web to everyday life, a term sometimes described as the “internet of things.”

“What’s been holding back the market so long is there hasn’t been a point product,” he says, referring to an automation device that can take the lead in both affordability and efficiency.

For Revolv to be successful, the functionality has to be simple, says Soucie.

“If it’s consumer-based it has to be easy to use from the out-of the-box setup,” he says.

Would you use a home automation system? How much would you pay? Tell us in the comments on our Facebook fun page.

Control Your House From Your Smartphone With Revolv for iOS | The Red Elephant

Trusteer Rapport The Global Leader in Endpoint Cybercrime Prevention

Even if you have a great Antivirus and Firewall you can be get infected!

Hundreds of organizations and millions of end users rely on Trusteer Rapport to protect their web applications, computers and mobile devices from online threats.

Trusteer Rapport is security software designed to protect confidential data besides your Antivirus andFirewall, such as account credentials, from being stolen by malicious software (malware) and via phishing. To achieve this goal, the software first includes anti-phishing measures to protect against misdirection and attempts to prevent malicious screen scraping. The software is compatible with Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X and can be downloaded free of charge. Financial institutions offer the software free of charge with a view to making online banking safer for customers.

Trusteer is an IBM company

Trusteer is a Boston-based computer security company, responsible for the development of the Trusteer Rapport endpoint security software, Trusteer Pinpoint for clientless fraud prevention, malware detection, and account takeover detection, Trusteer Mobile, a mobile devices security solution, and and Trusteer Apex for the protection of enterprises against advanced malware attacks and data breaches. On August 15, 2013, it was announced that Trusteer would be acquired by IBM for around $1 billion.

Trusteer’s portfolio of products blocks online threats by combining multi-layer security software with real-time intelligence to achieve sustainable protection against malware, phishing attacks and to support regulatory compliance requirements. Trusteer’s malware research team analyzes information received from over 30,000,000 user endpoints and hundreds of organizations using Trusteer solutions to protect web applications, computers and mobile devices from online threats.

Why Trusteer Rapport?

“A recent test of best-of-breed anti-virus vendors and Web browser anti-phishing filters revealed that more than half of active malware and phishing threats on the Internet go undetected, with an average detection rate of 37 percent for malware and 42 percent for phishing.” Cyveillance, February 2009

Recent malware is capable of stealing your login credentials to online banking, brokerage, shopping, ecommerce, email, and social networking websites. Even if the site is deemed “secure”, fraudsters can use your online account to execute unauthorized transactions, place orders, send emails, and much more.

Trusteer Rapport works standalone or alongside any desktop security solution. It hides your login credentials and web communication from any type of malware and prevents unauthorized access to your accounts. You should use Rapport even if your computer runs the most updated antivirus solution.

How Trusteer Works?

When you browse to a website in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome, the Trusteer Rapport icon appears in or near the browser’s address bar.

The icon is green when Rapport is protecting your communication with the website:

And the icon is grey when the communication is not protected:

Rapport comes preconfigured to protect certain websites which are working directly with Trusteer to give their valued customers the best protection possible.

Of course, you should have Rapport protect you on all websites where you login or where you can read or send sensitive information.

To activate Rapport protection, browse to the website, click the grey Rapport icon, and then click the “Protect this Website” button.

Trusteer recommends you activate Rapport protection on any websites where you are sending your online identity.

On protected websites you can click the green Rapport icon for more information about the forms of protection provided by Rapport for that website.

Trusteer Rapport The Global Leader in Endpoint Cybercrime Prevention | The Red Elephant

Apple Reveals iPhone 5S

iPhone 5S

Apple unveiled the next-generation iPhone at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. on Tuesday. The iPhone 5S — revealed alongside a low-cost iPhone model, the iPhone 5C — keeps the same overall physical design as the previous-generation iPhone 5, but it also has a number of upgrades.

Calling it the most “forward-looking” iPhone it’s ever launched, Apple equipped the iPhone 5S to run 64-bit apps (all previous models ran at 32 bits) thanks to a new processor: the Apple A7. It packs more than 1 billion transistors into a 102mm chip. Apple has re-engineered all the built-in apps — such as Mail, Calendar and iPod — for 64-bit architectures.

Apple says the new chip makes the iPhone 5S five times faster than the iPhone 5 and 56 timesthan the original iPhone. The A7 chip supports OpenGL 3.0/ES Version 3.0 for console-level 64-bit graphics. The upcoming Infinity Blade III will be one of the first games to take advantage of the upgrade to deliver improved graphics.

The iPhone 5S introduces a CoreMotion API for developers — consolidating sensor data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass — powered by a co-processor called the M7. Apple says it’s “optimized for contextual awareness,” such as when the user is in a moving vehicle.

Apple says the system will empower a new generation of health and fitness apps.

One of the major additions to the hardware is a fingerprint sensor in the home button, which enables a feature called TouchID. The iPhone 5S scans the fingertip of the person pressing the button, eliminating the need for a lock code. TouchID also means the end of the repeated ritual of entering your Apple ID password every time you download a new app.

The fingerprint sensor, which has a protective layer of durable sapphire crystal, can store multiple fingerprints and read them from any orientation. They all reside, encrypted, on the A7 chip.

iPhone 5S with Major Camera Improvements

The iPhone’s camera is also improved with new sensors that have 15% more area. The Apple-designed lens has five elements with an f/2.2 aperture. The larger sensor translates into bigger pixels that are backed by upgraded image-processing software that automatically sets white balance and exposure level in a dynamic, local tone map of the image.

As predicted, the camera is equipped with a dual-LED flash. The two LEDs have different color temperatures, illuminating a scene with warm and cold light to draw out more natural color. The iPhone’s camera also now includes a burst mode that snaps 10 still pictures in one second with automatic image stabilization. (Panorama photos go up to 28 megapixels.)

Finally, the iPhone 4S camera is capable of capturing HD video at 120 frames per second (fps). The video camera also has a slow-motion mode.

Gold!

Apple is injecting a little more color into its flagship phone as well. The iPhone 5S will be available in white, black and now champagne gold, marking a change from previous generations, which were available only in white and black.

Battery life is rated as follows: 10 hours 3G talk, 8 hours 3G browsing, 10 hours LTE or Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours video playback, 40 hours music playback and 250 hours standby.

The iPhone 5S has virtually the exact same shape as the iPhone 5, at 4.87 x 2.31 x 0.3 inches, and it weighs 3.95 ounces.

Surprisingly, the iPhone 5S does not support 802.11ac Wi-Fi, a “forward-looking” feature of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and other Android smartphones.

The iPhone 5S is actually the seventh iPhone model Apple has ever unveiled. It keeps with Apple’s general pattern of altering the design of the iPhone once every two years — the last big physical change coming in last year’s iPhone 5.

Although the iPhone 5S and 5C replace the iPhone 5, Apple will continue to sell the iPhone 4S — albeit with just one storage option, 8GB.

Rumors have swirled around the iPhone 5S for the past year. Although competition in the smartphone space has heated up considerably in that time, Apple kept to its annual schedule of releasing the new iPhone in the fall. The big question is: Will consumers still buy Apple’s signature product as they used to?

Correction: This article originally reported a pre-order date for the iPhone 5S, but Apple has not yet announced one for that model.

Apple Reveals iPhone 5S | The Red Elephant

12 SEO Tips And Trends To Get Ready For Fall

SEO is getting increasingly harder, but the wins are going to be longer lasting if you can get them.

With fall fast approaching, it is time to put on our SEO white hats and review current SEO tips and trends for the upcoming season. SEO or search engine optimization is in constant refinement and those that play by the rules with white hat techniques and strategies and stay on top of emerging trends will have a better chance of reaching their optimization goals.

SEO Tips and Trends Check List

While Google’s goal has been to eliminate spam and enhance the user’s experience by providing better content, here is a list of things to check for the fourth quarter.

1. Review your content strategy: Make it a goal to create unique and valuable content for your blog and web pages. Some experts recommend, as a general guideline, that articles have 400 to 600 words. But, there is a growing consensus that more in depth articles of up to 1,000 words or more have increased value. By ensuring that your articles are unique, offer value and are of proper depth and detail, you will avoid Google’s low quality content or shallow content ding that the Panda algorithm update of 2011 addressed.
2. Review your titles: Title tags should be uniquely crafted with no more than 6-8 words and should not to exceed 70 characters. The most important keyword should be at the beginning of the title and keywords should not be repeated.
3. Review your description meta tags: Meta descriptions should not exceed 156 characters as Google will cut if off after it reaches that character length. Check each page’s meta description tag to be sure that they accurately describe the content of that page. Google may use the description tag to create the rich snippet or the few lines of text beneath the linked title in the search results.
4. Ensure that quality content is above the fold: Make sure that you have quality content above the fold on your web pages. “Above the fold” refers to the content of a web page that can be seen when you first open it on a computer without scrolling. Google rolled out the Page layout algorithm improvement in January of 2012 as part of the company’s ongoing effort to provide quality and relevant search results. Sites that are top heavy with ads felt the sting. To be certain that you website is not affected by this update, be sure that you are showing valuable information above the fold.
5. Utilize the power of Google Plus: Google Plus has become a major influence in getting web pages indexed almost immediately in Google’s search results. Rolled out in 2011, Google Plus is a must have tool in your SEO tool chest. If you have not set up an account, make it a priority.
6. Set up Google Authorship: After you have set up Google Plus, set up Google authorship and link it to your blog/articles. Google Authorship has significant SEO benefits including your photo being displayed in the search results. It also helps to inspire trust and confidence which may result in higher click through rates.
7. Prune unnatural or spammy links: Google’s Penguin algorithm roll out of 2012 was a shock wave felt worldwide. One of Penguin’s objectives is to identify and devalue sites that have too many low quality inbound links leading to your website. Those who had participated in link exchanges or purchased links felt the sting of Penguin’s wrath.Even if you have not taken part in these activities, it is a good idea to check the backlinks to your website. Using Google’s Webmaster Tools you can identify any links that look unnatural. We had one client’s site affected by another site that had been hacked. There were hundreds of unnatural links to the client’s site from the hacked website. A plan of action to remove unnatural links if you do discover them includes:
   1. Identifying them through Google Webmaster Tools
   2. Asking the website owner/webmaster to remove them, and
   3. If they will not remove them or request a payment to remove them, use Google’s disavow tool to disavow the entire domain name.
8. Encourage natural links: Encouraging natural links goes hand in hand with your content strategy. By focusing on creating unique and valuable content, you will be encouraging others to link to your website naturally. Content marketing rather than link building should be the goal.
9. Use Google Webmaster Tools: If you haven’t set up a Google Webmaster Tools account, make it a priority. Google’s Webmaster Tools offers a variety of important reports to help you identify areas of concern.
10. Google Local: If your business depends on search traffic from the local community, you will want to set up Google Local after you set up Google Plus. With Google’s Venice update in 2012, the search engine giant considers the physical location of a business and shows them in organic search results. Google reviews will show in the results along with the business name, phone number and physical address. The influence of Google Local on search results is expected to grow.
11. Responsive Design: If your website is not created with a responsive design, make it top priority. Google recommends a responsive design to enable your website to fit any screen size that the site is viewed in using the same URL, style sheets and HTML. “The search engines will give increasing weight to sites that can provide a good mobile platform experience to users.”
12. Social Media: At the June 2013 SMX Advanced Q&A session with Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land’s founding editor asked Matt Cutts what the most overrated thing out there in SEO was. Matt responded, “Short-term social data. Longer-term, though, will be different.”As long-term social media data has been identified as an emerging influence by Google’s Distinguished Engineer, social media marketing interactions should continue to be implemented. By utilizing social media sites, you will be able to engage with users and ultimately drive traffic to your website. Determine the best social media sites where your potential audience is and foster engagement. Google Plus should be a top priority due to the SEO advantages.

12 SEO Tips And Trends To Get Ready For Fall | The Red Elephant