Google

Increasing the number of quality backlinks to your website can be one of the most impactful and difficult tasks of a sound SEO strategy.

What's a Backlink?

A backlink is traditionally defined as another website that links to your own. At their most basic level, a quality backlink acts as a vote of confidence for your website. The more votes you have, the better you rank!

File this one under the, "it's good to have cash reserves in a down economy" category.

Thanks to Google's new Browser Size tool, I now know that 20% of the average Google visitor will not see the full width of the LevelTen website. This is particularly useful information to take into account when you're building a new website. You probably want to be sure your website's most important information can be found within the 90-95% regions.

Have you found a good use for Google Wave yet? Until more people join (and there's some other way to be notified of a new wave without having to log in), I have a feeling I won't be using it too often.

But, I've got 3 Google Wave invites to hand out. If you want to see what the much hyped service is about yourself, now's your chance.

First three to comment get the wave invites!

Today may prove to be a game changer for Twitter.

Why?

Because of lists. Today marked the major release push for Twitter Lists, a new feature that's been rolling out slowly to users over the last week or so. Twitter Lists will allow you to create lists of other Twitter users, which you can share across your network.

Contrary to popular belief, I say the best day of the week is Monday. Not Friday, not Thursday, and certainly not Saturday... Monday. Why is it my favorite day, you might ask? Because on Mondays, I get to review and edit our fantastic weekly podcasts. Sure, I usually know the topics ahead of time, and most days, I even participate in the podcasts, but in a world where yesterday's news may as well be last year's news, a refresher is always good.

Our species thrives on speed and efficiency. As James Gleick's book, "Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything," implies, we are "instant" addicts of the manic 20th century. The need for instantaneous transfer of information is in our veins and it translates to our creation of technology and the web.

Don't like what you see when you Google yourself? Then it's high time you set up a Google profile.

On your profile page you can decide what the world sees when they Google you - who you are, what you look like, where you've lived, where you've worked, and what schools you attended. You can even link to all your other websites and social networking profiles like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Your profile and photo even show up at the bottom of Google's search results page. Think of it as Google's own Table of Contents to you.

Google just released this great little tool called "Wonder Wheel". It allows you to refine your search and find derivatives of keywords. Wonder Wheel is one of a series of refining options that Google has released. The way you use it is by putting in a keyword (broad) in the query box. For the sake of this example I'll use "Bows". When Google sends you back results for your query go up to the top left hand side of the page click on "Show options". This will take you to another page that will allow you to refine that search.