The acquisition of Skype 2 years ago for $8.5 billion sent a buzz through people about what this holds for Microsoft’s future. Now, the wait is over. To add to the various changes Microsoft is felicitating in terms of the transition of Hotmail to Outlook, including SkyDrive, it now has the added advantage of chatting through Skype.

The beginning of May marked the first look at this wonderful and exiting tie up. The exclusive first look is already up and running for Outlook users in UK. It will be available to other Outlook users in USA and Germany a few weeks prior to its worldwide release.

Skype is already helping people connect all over the world and now with Hotmail support, your loved ones just got a little closer.

Getting Skype

For those of you who have yet to experience the bliss of a Skype call, there is now an excuse to get it. Getting Skype is simple and the first step to merging your accounts. Just go to skype.com and download the plug in for your OS and browser. All recent versions of your browser should support it. Then all that’s left to do is connect it to your Microsoft account.

Merging Your Accounts

If you are already have a Skype account and are a Hotmail, Outlook or MSN user you may merely merge your accounts in a few simple and basic steps.

Open Skype on your computer. The dialogue box appears and you are requested to sign in. Refrain from doing that. Instead you will see a little button on the right that will ask you to log in with a Microsoft account. Click on that button.

A log in box appears. Log in and follow the steps till you have successfully merged your accounts.

NOTE: After merging your accounts you will only be able to log in with your Microsoft account name and password. This was done to ensure people have fewer passwords to remember.

Sometimes a call is all that’s needed to make a difference. For those sticky situations Skype can now be accessed from your Outlook account. Hotmail support provides you with instant calling from your email. While reading or replying to an email simply scroll over the sender/receiver’s photo to view an option to start a Skype call with them.

As the integration slowly takes place there has been mixed reactions to the merge. The changes to Hotmail’s brand and design, by changing it to Outlook, have helped garner 60 million users worldwide. Many wonder what this holds for the future of Skype, as rumor has it that after a period of time Skype will only be able to be accessed by a Microsoft log in. This loss of individuality along with the inability of keeping your MSN and Skype contacts separate has left many a user fuming. Yet the integration still holds a great deal of connectivity in store along with an ease of operation that was previously absent from MSN. Only time will tell whether Microsoft chooses to completely integrate the two or not, based on feedback.

Until then all we can do is wait, watch and Skype.

SEO con artists are everywhere, delivering fake results and making fake promises. But if you are smart enough, you can easily call their bluff. Before you renew your monthly contract with that apparent expert, make sure you get yourself familiar with the most popular tricks that SEO con artists use.

Today, almost anyone who is a no one is either an online copywriter or an SEO expert. Lack of knowledge among small business owners and the sheer pace of the internet marketing industry are spawning the growth of these SEO con artists. These are the people who give you false promises and show you false results. If you are looking for SEO services, it is important to be aware of these SEO con artists and their conning techniques.

Here are 5 really easy giveaways of SEO con artists:

Purchasing traffic and redirecting it to your Website

his is a classic trick of SEO con artists. Traffic is purchased from paid internet marketing services such as Google Adwords and passed off as organic search engine traffic. Skilled coders manipulate traffic sources in web logs and analytics to make Adwords traffic look like it is coming from organic results.

Catching this trick is easy though. Install Google Webmaster Tools, and try tracking web analytics as well as web logs for a detailed traffic overview. You will spot the trick sooner or later.

Altering Affiliate Codes

For websites which have an active affiliate program, con artists make the affiliate referral traffic look as if it is coming from organic search results. Communicating with your most productive affiliates from time to time helps you catch the trick early and nab the fraudster.

The Social media Con

Growing influence of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the coming of Google + has prompted several SEO con artists to add the latest con to their repertoire. They build a superficial network of followers on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter page etc. Building a superficial network comes easy. All you need to do is make fake profiles by the dozens every day. However, that does not solve the real purpose- of getting found by potential customers on social media channels.

Checking profiles of your followers and checking interactivity of your social media pages is an easy way to keep a check on this. Make sure the company offering Vancouver SEO services isn’t duping you this way.

Charging a bomb for meta-tag updates

Meta-tags play a very small role when it comes to search engine rankings. Moreover, updating meta-tags for your website is the easiest of jobs for an SEO expert. But a SEO con artist would still charge you a bomb for this job, which is worth peanuts.

They Simply Vanish

Every con artist does that and SEO con artists are no different. You enter into a long term contract with them and a couple of months later, they simply disappear. That’s why, it is important to go for trusted SEO Vancouver companies, or for that matter, anywhere else. You never know who might turn out to be a SEO con artist.

Twitter has come to become an integral internet marketing tool and helps on multiple levels to promote your website or your blog. If you are setting up a twitter account for your brand, you want to make sure you are optimizing all its features for your benefit. Go through these basic guidelines and see how you can leverage this social media portal to enhance traffic to your pages.

1.    While setting up a twitter account, make sure that as a brand you fill in all the fields in the profile including a brief on your brand, the link to your website and also a photo that helps your followers know it is you and even build an association with those who aren’t too familiar with your brand.

2.    Twitter is an excellent platform where you can share articles you have posted on your blog or other article submission websites. To be able to truly make the most of this tool, you must start developing parallel content on the internet which is worthy of sharing to your followers on twitter.

3.    There are ways in which you can auto update your twitter account by integrating it with websites such as EzineArticles. These websites allow you to auto share links on your Twitter account for all articles that they approve. The idea is to drive as many readers as possible onto these blogs and articles. Not only will you be able to drive traffic of your followers on Twitter, but you must also aim at creating content which is interesting enough for your followers to “Re-tweet” and share with their followers in return, thus creating a chain reaction which drives more traffic into your pages.

4.    To be able to leverage the benefits of Twitter, as an internet marketing specialist, you need to design your micro as well as macro blogging content especially around the interests of your followers. This may be a lot easier for a brand targeting young audiences. On the other hand, if you are a brand that is into a business like health care services, you need to move beyond giving mundane health tips to updating your account with more interesting and relevant material which is engaging to your current followers and even drives additional Twitter users to follow you and “re-tweet” your content.

5.    Internet Marketing Vancouver experts urge you to use effective #Hashtags and Handles that are keyword friendly and relevant to current topics. This makes it easier for you to show up on popular and trending topics, thus further driving followership.

It may take a long time to develop a strong follower-base on Twitter, but remember to keep your content relevant and interesting and you are sure to be on the right path.

Twitter as an Internet Marketing tool opens a number of avenues to drive traffic to your web pages. Read more to understand how you can make the most of this tool.

By incorporating SEO goals in the Social Media Marketing activities help marketers and advertisers help enhance the value of their investments. This article discusses how a well leveraged social media and SEO plan can help meet  a brands internet marketing goals.

A generic goal all Social Media and SEO initiatives is to ensure that your brand is getting a significant amount of positive brand mentions over negative ones. Holistic visibility across all social media platforms is an encouraging way to realize that your brand and the content that you put up is a lot more than just a seasonal offer for social media users.

With most website and content developers shifting focus to SEO exercises to optimize user traffic, it is important to understand the factors that can pose hindrances. This article discusses the factors that are often ignored while implementing a SEO plan that hold back the growth of your website in the long run.

Today, internet presence management and enhancement of website visibility on search engines tops the list of priorities for internet marketers. It is evident that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a lot more complicated process than simply uploading content on the web. With intense competition to rank higher on search engine result, website owners and internet marketers need to constantly reinvent their approaches. Inadequate SEO strategies pose a number of challenges in SEO growth and eventually the visibility of your website on the internet.

Here are some of the most common reasons according to SEO Vancouver companies that inhibit your SEO growth:

1. Lack of Clarity in Goals:

The primary issue, as per SEO Vancouver based companies that hinder SEO growth is the fact that most SEO exercises are implemented without outlining any clear goals. It is important to set time bound benchmarks to measure the success of any SEO process. The lack of goals can lead to wandering around the overwhelmingly large internet space without having any clarity in the relation between the SEO plan and web traffic on your website.

1. Content Quality and Monitoring:

The easiest way to hinder your SEO growth is compromising on the quality of the content. A common mistake made by content developers is stuffing content with keywords and not paying enough attention to value content. Search engines have now developed algorithms that mark keyword stuffed content that lacks in quality as spam thus making sure that they are not ranked on their search pages.

1. Keyword Monitoring :

In addition to creating content, another important exercise that is commonly missed is tracking keyword trends. SEO is an ongoing exercise and needs to be tracked continuously. SEO Vancouver service providers commonly find that internet marketers upload content and months later discover their pages buried under those of their competitors who have most likely kept track of keyword trends which change by the day with new events.

1. Page Titles & URLS:

Lack of focus on page titles, sitemaps and H1’s are an important inhibition in a websites SEO growth. Irrelevant and long URL’s make it more difficult for web surfers and search engine crawlers to track the information you upload. As per SEO Vancouver companies, shorter URLs have twice as much a chance to get clicked on than the longer ones.

In addition to these inhibitions, there are a number of other areas that need to be looked into to avoid any roadblocks in your SEO plan. Do not ignore the importance of social media marketing; avoid flash and java pages and try to include as much crisp content on the pages instead; and make sure that all your page linking exercises are efficiently charted out. Give extra thought to your SEO goals and how you intend to achieve it and you will be on your way to an inhibition free SEO growth for your website.