Welcome To The New Search Engine Land!

Search Engine Land has a new look and features! For our regular readers, as well as new visitors, here’s a guide to what you’ll find on the redesigned site and how everything works.

New “Flip Box” For Featured Stories

One of our biggest challenges is that we publish so much content that it can be hard to feature everything. On a busy news day, some great news stories and feature articles could get “pushed down” or “pushed off” our home page. Plus, some fantastic columns might be missed, given they come “below the fold” on the home page.

This is where our new “flip box” comes in. You’ll find it on the home page of the site, just above our news stories:

The box allows you to easily scan through a variety of stories, such as news items that are still important, even if they’re no longer breaking, recent features and analysis pieces, along with recent columns.

By default, the flip box will automatically “flip” through various stories, and you can use the arrows in the top right corner to go forward or backward on your own. Click on any story previewed in the box, and you’ll be taken to the actual story.

Major News Stories

Immediately below the flip box are our three most recent major news stories. Click on the headline to go to any story or use the “Read Story” link after the story’s summary, as the first set of arrows shows below:

OK, we’re pretty sure that was all self-evident, but we’re covering all the bases! The next arrow in the screenshot above highlights where you’ll be able to tell if there are any comments on a story. If so, the number will be shown.

Want to see more major news stories beyond the latest three shown? Use the “See More News Stories” link that the last arrow points at, or select “News” from the navigation bar at the top of the page. Either will take you to our news page.

News Briefs

Beyond major news articles, Search Engine Land also alerts you to smaller news stories that may be of interest. These news briefs are shown on the home page immediately below the News Stories section.

Want to see more than the latest briefs shown? Choose the “See More News Briefs” link as the arrow points to in the screenshot over there to the right.

Alternatively, select “News” from the navigation bar. Either option takes you to the aforementioned news page, where more major news stories and search news briefs can both be found.

Columns

Search Engine Land has a wide range of columns covering topics ranging from paid search to SEO to link building. You’ll find the latest columns listed further down on the home page:

At the end of the columns listed on the home page, the arrow in the screenshot above points to the “See More Columns” link, where you can view additional ones.

Here’s a tip. All of our columns are available via email. Sign up for a particular column, and you’ll get the full-text when the next edition of that column is posted. Check out the entire list on our Columns page.

Sidebar Says: Search & Subscribe!

There’s a “sidebar” section to the home page and all the individual story pages on the site. Our search box, which lets you search through all the content on the site, has been relocated to the top of the sidebar.

Just below that are our subscription options. Want to keep up with our content via RSS? There’s a button for that, as well as how to follow us on Twitter for updates or to like us on Facebook, so that you’ll get our stories in your news feed. Options to keep up with us on Google Buzz, LinkedIn & YouTube are also shown.

Tab Through Our Stories

Another new feature in the sidebar are two different “tab boxes” for stories.

The first lets you can easily toggle through to see our most recent news stories, briefs, features and how-to content, at-a-glance. It’s shown below, on the left:

The second, on the right, allows you to tab through our stories that are most shared on Facebook, Twitter or getting the most comments recently.

Our Webcasts & Conferences

Also in the sidebar, we’ll continue to keep you updated about Search Engine Land’s upcoming webcasts and conferences.

Our webcasts are done through our SMN: Search Marketing Now web site and are available to anyone for free.

SMX: Search Marketing Expo is our conference series with in-person events that happen around the world.

SearchCap: Your Daily Search News Recap

Feeling swamped by all the search news out there? Our daily email newsletter, SearchCap, remains the perfect solution. Each day, it updates you on all the stories posted to Search Engine Land plus provides comprehensive, search-related headlines from around the web.

You’ll now find a sign-up box at the end of each of our news and feature stories, making it easy to subscribe. You can also subscribe and learn more about the newsletter from the SearchCap page.

Share Our Articles

Also at the end of our articles is a redesigned “Share” section, allowing you to share a story you like with others via Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz. For the curious, we use buttons powered by ShareThis.

There’s also a generic “Share” button that lets you share a story through email or via a wide number of other services. And for those who prefer to like items on Facebook, there’s a separate option for that.

Enjoyed an article? Please consider sharing and liking it with others. That especially helps new people on Facebook discover our content.

Comments Welcome!

A few months ago, we quietly added a way for people to comment on our stories by logging in through Twitter. That greatly increased the commenting activity here, which we love. Anyone can also comment without a Twitter account, simply by registering with us directly.

Wondering if the new Facebook comments system will be coming to Search Engine Land? We’re considering it, but we’re largely waiting to see if it better integrate so that comments can be recorded within our own database, rather than just being kept on Facebook’s site.

More likely, in the near future, we’ll be looking to let people use our own commenting system with a Facebook account, in the way they can with Twitter — as well as adding support for other systems such as those from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Stay tuned.

If you’re commenting, don’t forget to read our commenting guidelines!

Search Engine Land Premium Memberships

We continue to offer our Search Engine Land Premium Memberships, that provide a range of benefits:

• Access to the complete Search Engine Land Library, where all our stories are organized by topic, including the How To section
• Exclusive Search Week & Search Month newsletters, which give you a weekly & monthly recap of search news
• Discounts on our SMX conferences
• SMX video content. Learn by watching from our huge collection of sessions recorded at our SMX conferences.

Trying a membership is a no-brainer. There’s a 30 day money-back guarantee. There’s also one other key benefit in joining. You help support the site and the content we produce here. So think about becoming a member. Learn more on our member information page.

But Wait, There’s More (To Come)!

Hopefully that gives you a sense of some of the changes we’ve made today. Along with them, we’ve also slightly widened the size of our pages, which allowed us to bring our font size up. We think this makes things easier to read — as do new fonts we’re using for our headlines and story text.

Thanks to our technical director Michelle Robbins, who has worked hard over the past few weeks making the changes, as well as to all our Search Engine Land editors for their suggestions on improvements.

We’ll be making tweaks and changes now that the new site is live, plus we’ll be listening closely to your feedback. Enjoy the new look!