Real quick post here (I hope) about fresh content in Google’s search results. Background Google has been emphasizing fresh content in its search results for some time now. That link goes back to November 2011, and when I write on Search Engine Land about Google’s monthly search quality changes, they often include something about fresh content. Today’s Article & Google Freshness About four hours ago, I published a post on this blog with this headline: The Fallacy of Timing Blog Posts & Social Media Updates. Note, too, that I wrote a different title tag for that…
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
-
Most Topular Stories
-
Google’s Freshness Algorithm in Action
Small Business Search Marketing11 May 2012 | 6:31 pm -
Top 5 Joomla SEO Plugin Extensions
HigherVisibility16 May 2012 | 9:39 amDownloading free plugins takes about two minutes, so it’s worth it for a small business owner or blog owner to try a couple different plugins until the website is perfect. SEO plugins are a great way to help make sure you’re optimizing your content for search engines, but there are so many to different choices that it can feel overwhelming—especially if you own a Joomla site. Joomla sites are quickly becoming more and more popular because they are easy to use, easy to customize, and put a large emphasis on content management. However, it is necessary that a Joomla owner downloads at… -
Google PLAs Gamed by eBay
Jordon Meyer - eCommerce Search Marketing28 Apr 2012 | 10:04 amSomeone just gamed Google PLAs (product listing ads) with a listing on eBay. Aside from the somewhat unique PLA display shown below, with 6 product listings to the right of the SERPs; you can see that the advertiser added a red border to their product image. This essentially highlighted the listing and made it look like Google featured it out of all the other listing ads. But, it was just a trick with the product image. You can see the highlighted border in the image. *I only added the arrow. Google PLA Highlighted Ad You can see in the actual eBay listing that the product image still has the… -
20 Clues Your Marketing Stinks, Straight From the Horse's Mouth
HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog16 May 2012 | 8:00 amIf there's one thing that makes our toes tingle (other than inbound marketing, of course), it's seeing examples of marketing done right. Great marketing makes us excited to be working in a trailblazing industry where other marketers are doing seriously innovative things to make marketing people actually like. But to get so excited about awesome marketing means there's another end of the spectrum. A dark side where email spammers, poor segmenters, and keyword stuffers live trying to pass off their activities as marketing. Those guys give legitimate marketers a bad name, and the worst part of… -
Don't Just Build Links, Become a Thought Leader
Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing3 May 2012 | 4:20 pmby Nick Stamoulis I think we can all agree that content marketing is an indispensable component of SEO and Internet marketing in general. Great content gets shared, which in turn creates inbound links to your website, which helps your site do better in the search engines, which drive more traffic to your site and so forth and so on. But too often site owners are just looking at content as a link building tactic. In reality, the content you are creating for your SEO, content marketing and social media marketing campaigns can serve a much greater purpose---it can turn your brand into a thought…
-
Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills
-
Toren Ajk & Michael Sprouse on Today’s ShoeMoney.TV Show
15 May 2012 | 7:16 amFormer Playboy and Epic executive Michael Sprouse is in the house to co-host todays ShoeMoney.tv show. Today my guest will be mobile advertising expert Toren Ajk. Should be a good one don’t miss it! 1pm CST on ShoeMoney.tv BTW you have a few more days to grab my latest video series – The Local Internet Marketing Blueprint for only $49!! Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other? -
Why You Should Make Your Own Product (And Not Be An Affiliate)
15 May 2012 | 7:00 amHey, Justin Goff here… I’ve made a living as a product owner and an affiliate for the past 5 years. Now, one of the easiest ways to make money online is to be an affiliate for another product. And while I recommend being an affiliate marketer to a lot of new people, once you know what you are doing you should really be making your own products. Whether your product is something like a DVD, a vitamin supplement or even something common like phone chargers – having your own product gives you SO much more control over what you are doing. Along with that, there’s a… -
FTC Scores Big Court Win Against DRTV Veterans
14 May 2012 | 8:00 amIn a much-awaited decision, a federal judge has granted summary judgment in favor of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against DRTV veterans Gary Hewitt and Doug Gravink and their company, Family Products LLC, in the case FTC v. John Beck Amazing Profits et al. Hewitt and Gravink sold “John Beck’s Free & Clear Real Estate System,” “John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days,” and “Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions” through national infomercials. The FTC obtained a preliminary injunction in 2009 but failed to get an asset freeze, which allowed the defendants… -
The Local Marketing Blueprint is live! (save 75% off limited time)
12 May 2012 | 8:28 amBack a couple months ago we surveyed our list and blog readers as to what they were interested in more. Learning internet marketing for their companies or offering services to these companies. We received over 5,000 responses and it was split pretty much right down the middle. So I created a course that was tailored to both parties and for a limited time its ONLY $49!!! Check it out on Udemy now – there is a free video in every course if you would like to demo before purchasing. ==> http://shmny.me/localmarketingblueprint This course is designed for 2 people. Business owners - The… -
@unclecreepymma – Free Shirt Friday Future UFC Champ Ian McCall
11 May 2012 | 10:00 amToday I am happy to feature Ian “Uncle Creepy” McCall who sent me this legit shirt: Ian is currently ranked the #1 125lb fighter and will be fighting for the UFC Championship soon. WAR CREEPY! and the UGCTT! If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?
-
Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News and Opinion
-
CNBC Details How Americans Really Feel About Facebook
16 May 2012 | 1:36 pmHow do you really feel about Facebook? Do you trust it? Would you give it your money? Is it fun? Is it safe? These are just a few of the questions asked in a recent AP-CNBC poll and the answers they got. . . well. . . they weren’t exactly surprising. But hey, we love data here so let’s take a look! Who is on Facebook? Facebook is a keeper for most of the US. 56% of all Americans have a Facebook page. 3 in 10 use it everyday with younger users visiting more often. Those who don’t have a page, 35% say they have no interest or they have better things to do with their time. 22%… -
Twitter’s New Email Digest Makes Top Content More Visible
16 May 2012 | 12:53 pmTwitter used to be one of my favorite web destinations but in recent months I’ve nearly walked away from it thanks to the overwhelming overflow of information. It’s what happens with social media, you start following a few people you really enjoy then you add the obligatory follows and work follows and brand follows and soon it’s too much to handle. I only follow 126 people and I get a new tweet every minute. What about the people who follow 300 accounts? Keeping up is impossible. (Cue the trumpeters) Announcing the new Twitter Email Digest! The digest is broken into two… -
IAB Launches Digital Media Sales Certification Program
16 May 2012 | 10:01 amEver have a bad experience with a sales person in the interactive space? That question is kind of like asking if you have ever felt the urge to breath first thing in the morning. I come from the sales side of the ISP and SEO industry as part of my interactive background. In my time, I did OK. In that time I also saw MANY who did not do OK and wondered what they said in an interview to get hired. That’s the way it is with most sales positions which is why turnover is so high and ‘opportunities’ are more than most other job segments. Part of the trouble is the learning curve… -
Study Says Social Media Ad Spend (US) Will Hit Almost $10B by 2016
16 May 2012 | 9:31 amIn a shocking development, a research company has chosen this particular week, of all weeks, to post their forecast for what is in store for social media ad spending in the US over the next several years. Do you think it was just dumb luck that it coincides with Facebook’s IPO ? Hey, who can blame BIA/Kelsey for jumping on the train that is the Facebook IPO Express? Here is the picture version of this predicted US social media spend through 2016. Let’s consider the whole Facebook IPO thingy in light of these numbers. In 2011, Facebook did somewhere in the neighborhood of $3… -
OK, So GM Pulls $10M in Facebook Ads, So What?
16 May 2012 | 1:42 amCould this Facebook IPO be over with already so we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming? Please?! Every Tom, Dick and pundit is putting in their heavily discounted two cents (it’s like there was a Groupon for pre-IPO Facebook hype and speculation and everyone appears to have bought it) and it is getting pretty silly. The latest chicken little concern is the pulling of Facebook ads, to the tune of $10 million, by General Motors. Here is the tweet from the Wall Street Journal’s Dennis Berman that set all of this in motion. In the world of “no good tweet goes…
-
The Clix Marketing Blog
-
Are You An Awesome Search & Social PPC Expert? Clix Marketing Wants You!
27 Apr 2012 | 2:28 pmClix Marketing needs to beef up our Rockstar PPC management team so that we can continue to provide super-awesome service and banging results for our amazing clients. Are you an awesome PPC manager who knows AdWords and adCenter like the back of your hand, AND can rock social PPC like Facebook and LinkedIn like nobody’s business? Then you may be a good fit! Hold On! Being a PPC Rockstar is a requirement – but that’s not all we’re looking for! We need someone who loves project management and client interaction as much as they love PPC. Our dream candidate will be able to analyze PPC… -
Create Content for Each Step of the B2B Buying Cycle
29 Nov 2011 | 8:37 amThis is a guest post by Nick Stamoulis, President of Brick Marketing One of the biggest differences between the B2B and B2C industries is the length of the average buying cycle. For instance, someone who deciding where they want to eat lunch (B2C) isn’t going to spend six months researching the restaurants in their neighborhood, taste-testing their dishes and worrying if the budget will support their decision. They’ll maybe spend six minutes reading a few reviews on Yelp before heading out the door. On the other hand, if a manufacturing company is looking into buying a new piece of… -
Are You An Awesome Search & Social PPC Expert? Clix Marketing Wants You!
26 Sep 2011 | 7:47 amAre You An Awesome Search & Social PPC Expert? Clix Marketing Wants You! Clix Marketing has been growing at an accelerated rate lately… and we’re only getting started! We need to beef up the team so that we can continue to provide super-awesome service and banging results for our amazing clients. Are you an awesome PPC manager who can rock Social PPC like Facebook and LinkedIn like nobody’s business? Do you know AdWords and adCenter like the back of your hand? Then you may be a good fit! What’s in it for you? A chance to work with and learn from the best. A virtual job – no… -
Google +1 Is Changing the Face of PPC. Are You Ready?
21 Sep 2011 | 1:37 pmThe time has come for all PPC advertisers to pay attention to Google’s +1. Last week I wrote an article about how +1 is starting to change how we manage AdWords for Search due to its potential affect on CTR and the indirect influence on Quality Score. Yesterday, Google announced that +1 is going to be included with ads on the Display Network starting in October! Today, I noticed a new section under the AdWords campaign Advanced Settings (as did a few folks on Twitter) labeled “Social Settings.” Not only is Google rolling out +1 on Display Network ads, but they are… -
7 Winning Strategies for PPC Remarketing Success
11 Jul 2011 | 7:06 amGoogle recently mentioned that “97% of new visitors do not convert the first time they arrive at your site.” While you never get a second chance to make a first impression, you have limitless opportunities to make that critical second impression, thanks to remarketing in AdWords. Google AdWords’ robust remarketing feature can enhance and expand your PPC campaign. This article will focus on seven high-level strategies that you can employ to bring users back to your website using remarketing after they’ve made their initial visit. Remarketing: Definition & Basics When someone visits…
-
Small Business Search Marketing
-
SBSM Flashback: May 2011
16 May 2012 | 12:50 amFor those of you who are new SBSM readers & subscribers, here’s a list of noteworthy posts you probably missed from one year ago. I try to put together a post like this each month to introduce new readers to old content that might be worth reading. Is Google Figuring Out When Many Businesses Share One Address? Study: Yelp has More Productive, Less Extreme Reviewers Facebook, LinkedIn More Popular Among SMBs Than Twitter, Survey Says SBSM Mailbag: Four URLs, But Only One Page … Duplicate Content? Who Wants to Be a Search Engine Submission Expert? Previous Flashbacks SBSM… -
Google’s Freshness Algorithm in Action
11 May 2012 | 6:31 pmReal quick post here (I hope) about fresh content in Google’s search results. Background Google has been emphasizing fresh content in its search results for some time now. That link goes back to November 2011, and when I write on Search Engine Land about Google’s monthly search quality changes, they often include something about fresh content. Today’s Article & Google Freshness About four hours ago, I published a post on this blog with this headline: The Fallacy of Timing Blog Posts & Social Media Updates. Note, too, that I wrote a different title tag for that… -
The Fallacy of Timing Blog Posts & Social Media Updates
11 May 2012 | 2:16 pmStudies that claim to tell you when the best time to publish a blog post or share content socially are, in my opinion, mostly a load of crap. That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking with it. You’ve probably seen these studies and statistics. The folks at Bit.ly (a service I like and use) just shared some of their data and we wrote about it on Marketing Land. In a nutshell, Bit.ly is saying that the best time to post stuff on Twitter and Facebook is early afternoon, U.S. Eastern time. I don’t mean to pick on Bit.ly because, as I said, that’s just the latest in a… -
One Month Away: Local University – Advanced! – in Seattle
7 May 2012 | 8:39 amWe’re exactly a month away from what should be a terrific day of local search marketing information! GetListed.org’s first advanced version of Local University is scheduled for June 7th in Seattle as one of the additional training workshops associated with SMX Advanced. Rather than our typical four-hour, single-track workshop for small business owners, the Advanced workshop will be a full-day event with separate afternoon content tracks — one for small business owners and smaller agencies, and the other for big brands and large agencies. And it’s not just the format… -
8 Common Twitter Questions from Small Business Owners
4 May 2012 | 12:14 pmConfession: I’ve spent more time doing social media marketing in the past three years than doing local SEO/marketing. (Maybe that’s why my GetListed.org Local University friends put me on the social media “beat.”) In my experience, Twitter is more of a mystery to small business owners than Facebook is; that’s probably because they’re already familiar with using Facebook as an individual, so making the jump to having a business page isn’t too difficult. But they’re not so familiar with Twitter. For a lot of small business owners, I think Twitter…
-
Yoast
-
Penguin, Panda, it’s not that black and white..
14 May 2012 | 7:37 amWe're getting quite a few site review requests and SEO consultancy requests recently for people that have been hit by a sudden drop in traffic. Because there has been quite some news about Google's Penguin and before that its Panda update, people are blaming those. In our perspective, whether you're blaming Penguin, Panda or another update from Google isn't really that interesting if you're not an SEO. What matters most is: you've lost traffic, how are you going to get it back?Why you'd want to know the update that caused itThe idea is that if you know which update caused your traffic to drop… -
Having a blast at BlueGlass LA
24 Apr 2012 | 12:18 pmI'm currently sitting in the conference room for BlueGlass LA, listening to Marty Weintraub and finishing my presentation I'll be giving this afternoon. Which leads me to the point of this post as I'm going to try and prove a point, therefore the following video is not really meant for you to watch but for me to test something with:As a side note, BlueGlass LA is probably the best conference I've been to in a while, with a ridiculous line-up of speakers, if you're going to go to an internet marketing conference, BlueGlass conferences are seriously among the very best in the US, second only to… -
Why I dislike Bo.lt
21 Apr 2012 | 4:59 pmWhen I released my updated WordPress SEO article a few weeks back, my buddy Avinash was kind enough to tweet it. He tweeted it, at first, with a bo.lt link. Bo.lt is a sharing service that allows you to basically make a copy of a page and add some notes or even some changes to the page. The idea is nice, as a webmaster though, I hate it. Let me explain why.You see, bo.lt makes a copy of the page at the moment it's prepared for sharing, they say they do that because of speed. As Avinash tweets a lot, he probably made that copy a couple of hours before he shared it. This wouldn't be so much of… -
WordPress Stats Infographic
16 Apr 2012 | 6:30 amMy Google Analytics plugin recently hit 3 million downloads and my WordPress SEO plugin hit its first million downloads. I thought those stats were cool and I decided to have an infographic made with more WordPress stats and dive in a little bit more and gather some stats that I thought would be interesting.If you read any blogs in the world, by now you'll know WordPress dominates the top 100 blogs in the world, Matt had some interesting comments about that. We've seen more WordPress stats, like these by Lorelle. I then started adding more stats on my own.I asked Experian Hitwise to give me… -
The ethics of SEO
4 Apr 2012 | 3:29 amThe type of SEO I help my clients do and promote to you using this blog is often labeled white hat SEO because it stays within Google's and other search engines guidelines. Other SEO's don't care about Google's guidelines as much and do what's called "black hat SEO". Far too often though, black hat SEO is confused with the hacking of sites and the use of other tactics not outside the laws of Google but the laws of our lands. I think it's time for me to explain where I stand in this.My backgroundAs a former Theology student and as someone raised in the Christian tradition, I have a fairly…
-
Conversation Marketing from Portent, Inc: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon
-
Wanted: Enterprise Search Gods
15 May 2012 | 12:30 pmLately, I’ve been feeling like a grade schooler punished along with the rest of the class for one student’s bad behavior. With Google’s Pandas, Penguins and other pandemonium-producing updates yet to come, we’re all Bart Simpson being forced to write on the SEO chalkboard, “I will not outsource link building to third-world countries that spam blogs.” Sheesh! It’s times like that that my mind turns to flights of fancy… If I could make Google do whatever I wanted… Well, I can and so can you — just not for the whole Web. We can control… -
Google Penguin for non-SEOs
14 May 2012 | 11:43 pmThey were cute until Google got to 'em If I say ‘Google Penguin’ to an SEO pro, they shudder. In the SEO world, Google’s Penguin update is the nastiest, scariest update since, I dunno, Florida? Here’s an explainer for all the marketers who are wondering what the hell just happened to their traffic: What’s an update? The engineers at Google constantly tune their search software to provide (hopefully) more accurate results. Most of these tune-ups are pretty small, and go unnoticed by anyone except us hardcore search geeks. They’re like thunderstorms: You… -
SEO & UX – Working together to make your site better
10 May 2012 | 2:57 pmA few years ago I stepped into a role as an information architect and user experience designer at a Portland ad agency. Coming from a background in search marketing, this was quite a bit of a change for me. The first thing I noticed was that SEO & UX should really be a more integrated system in the designing of a site. The second thing I noticed was that SEO really gets a bad rap from the UX and design community. This was really an invaluable experience for me, as I was able to look at both my former job and my current job in a different light. I got to be removed from my instincts as an… -
How to hire an SEO company, 2012 edition
9 May 2012 | 6:34 pmI’ve written other posts about hiring SEO firms: How to hire good ones. How to hire bad ones. But an update’s in order: Questionnaire for an SEO agency Start each agency you interview with 10 points. Add or subtract as indicated. Ask yourself: How did this firm get in touch with you? They cold-called or e-mailed you. No. -1 They answered your ad. Sorry, but good SEOs don’t spend their days scouring the internet want ads. Ads are good for comic relief, not smart hiring. -5 You found them. Good. That’s a good start. +1 Can you give me some references? No. Well, duh. -
How to Use Hootsuite and Twitter Lists to Engage Your Audience
8 May 2012 | 11:41 amI remember when I got my first Twitter follower. I was a bright-eyed web surfer with a bushy tail (since birth). @getfree_ebooks3 followed me, and our relationship blossomed. She was beautiful. I would tell her about what I was eating for lunch and other important Twitter issues, and she would suggest nice pieces of malware for my computer to download. I eventually discovered that @getfree_ebooks3 was a spam bot. It was heartbreaking. I realized the truth about Twitter. At that moment, I realized that the best way to create quality relationships on Twitter is to seek out the people in your…
-
search engine marketing - Google News
-
Does Facebook Advertising Work? - Marketwire (press release)
16 May 2012 | 9:05 amToronto StarDoes Facebook Advertising Work?Marketwire (press release)WordStream Inc., a provider of search engine marketing software and services, has released new research comparing the value of Facebook advertising to Google's Display Network -- the portion of Google's advertising business that allows advertisers to Study: Google ads work better than Facebook adsBoston HeraldAd war: Google versus FacebookCNN International (blog)GM Will Stop Paying for Ads on Facebook - Because They Don't WorkPCWorld (blog)ABC Newsall 804 news articles » -
SES Toronto 2012 Features New Internet Marketing Training Sessions for ... - MarketWatch (press release)
16 May 2012 | 7:02 amSES Toronto 2012 Features New Internet Marketing Training Sessions for MarketWatch (press release)Incisive Media's SES is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include ClickZ for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, and more » -
Search Mojo's Janet Driscoll Miller to speak at the Marketo Summit 2012 - PR Web (press release)
16 May 2012 | 12:03 amSearch Mojo's Janet Driscoll Miller to speak at the Marketo Summit 2012PR Web (press release)Janet Driscoll Miller, CEO and President, of the full service search engine marketing firm, Search Mojo, will speak at the Marketo Summit 2012 on Thursday, May 24th. Miller's session, entitled Tips for Achieving Success with Marketo, will review how and more » -
Internet Marketing Company Conducts a Poll on SEO Efforts - San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
15 May 2012 | 7:07 pmInternet Marketing Company Conducts a Poll on SEO EffortsSan Francisco Chronicle (press release)Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 15, 2012 Internet Marketing Company, one of the most reputable search engine marketing companies, announced results of the poll, "Do You Know That Social Media Buzz Can Help Your SEO Efforts?" on the Facebook® Platform.and more » -
KM Guru Celebrates Successful First Year - MarketWatch (press release)
15 May 2012 | 10:59 amKM Guru Celebrates Successful First YearMarketWatch (press release)KMGuru.com ), online and mobile business growth consultants specializing in Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing, are celebrating their booming first year in business this May. The success of KM Guru's first year in business is exceptional 29 Prime Releases Upgrade to Client Marketing WebsitesSan Francisco Chronicle (press release)all 9 news articles »
-
Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing
-
Those Who Don't Learn SEO are Doomed to Repeat It
16 May 2012 | 12:10 pmby Stoney deGeyter Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left? Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left? Repete? How about we just move on... In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it's no longer effective. We've seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn't long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who… -
Hello Again Marketing
8 May 2012 | 4:43 pmby Todd Bailey Have you lost sight of a well-loved service or product? People are creatures of repetition. Usually we commit when we find a service or product we enjoy using. Recently, Ryan Buddenhagen wrote a post on brand ability to bring back old services and products. The notion is not very novel. Blockbuster movies enjoy reviving old heroes and comics. Food producers sometimes reintroduce a retired food or beverage. The Eagles once did a "Hell Freezes Over" tour... Speaking of music, you may catch sight of modern-day hipsters wearing vintage CBGB shirts. The East Village club, opened… -
Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 1)
8 May 2012 | 2:04 pmby Mike Fleming I wouldn't call the "average position" metric pointless, but it's definitely lying to you. Most people approach this metric with a natural misunderstanding. It's natural to think, "This is the average position that my organic listing or paid ad shows up at in a search for this keyword." Sorry, but no. How could a tool just flat out lie to you? Well, the tool isn't lying to you. It's your understanding of what that metric is communicating that is lying to you. In a recent article titled, "The big lie of AdWords average position," light is… -
The Right Message May Not Be So Right for Your Audience
4 May 2012 | 11:05 amby Stoney deGeyter The number one key to your business growth is crafting a message that speaks to your audience. Having the right message builds up your strengths and helps you overcome any deficiencies you might have. McDonald's doesn't make the best hamburgers in the world, but they do have a great bit of messaging that speaks to their target audience. It's that message, not the hamburgers, that makes Micky D's the number one fast food restaurant in America. While substance is important in order to have a great message, the message itself helps establish the perception of your substance. -
Don't Just Build Links, Become a Thought Leader
3 May 2012 | 4:20 pmby Nick Stamoulis I think we can all agree that content marketing is an indispensable component of SEO and Internet marketing in general. Great content gets shared, which in turn creates inbound links to your website, which helps your site do better in the search engines, which drive more traffic to your site and so forth and so on. But too often site owners are just looking at content as a link building tactic. In reality, the content you are creating for your SEO, content marketing and social media marketing campaigns can serve a much greater purpose---it can turn your brand into a thought…
-
PepperJam Exchange » News & Events
-
Beezid.com (30%) Launches Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange
11 May 2012 | 4:22 pmWe are proud to announce the launch of the Beezid.com (30%) Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange www.PepperJam.com Join this program NOW! About the Beezid Publisher Program: Welcome! Get ready to take part in some exciting commissions headed your way by promoting one of the leading penny auction sites, Beezid.com! Beezid.com is a top rated penny auction site, offering incredible savings of up to 99% OFF on brand name electronics, home applicances, video games, jewellery and a whole lot more. Signing up is free, and new members get 10 Free Bids to try us out. Here are some of the things… -
Hayden Harnett (15 – 20%) Launches Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange
11 May 2012 | 11:06 amWe are proud to announce the launch of the Hayden Harnett (15-20%) Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange – www.pepperjamnetwork.com. Join this program NOW! About the Hayden Harnett Affiliate Program: Formed in Brooklyn, where it remains to this day, on April Fools’ Day, 2005, Hayden-Harnett began in a tiny makeshift studio. The goal was to combine modern fabrication with a classic sensibility, and the result made Hayden-Harnett handbags instantly recognizable. It became quickly apparent that this burgeoning endeavor was no April Fools’ joke. While Hayden-Harnett focused on their… -
Smartwool (7.5%) Launches Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange
9 May 2012 | 3:06 pmWe are proud to announce the launch of the Smartwool (7.5%) Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange www.PepperJam.com Join this program NOW! About the Smartwool Publisher Program: Why SMARTWOOL? We’re wool geeks, there’s no way around it. For over 17 years we’ve been combining the latest in innovative design, technology and construction with the best wool nature has to offer, and it’s this expertise and experience combined with our passion for mountain sports that makes our products so unique. We care Zque is an accreditation program designed to ensure environmental,… -
Celeb Style: Celebs love these great brands!
8 May 2012 | 2:23 pmCelebrities often set the benchmark for what the next hot trend will be. If a celeb wears it, chances are you can count the hours until that item is sold out in stores and online. It’s easy to promote stores and products that are loved by celebs – they products practically sell themselves! Just look at a few of our featured programs loved by celebrities and famous people around the world! Violent Lips are a temporary lip tattoo that lasts up to 8 hours. It has hundreds of styles, colors, and patterns! Violent Lips have been worn by many celebrities. Kim Kardashian is seen sporting… -
CPO Outdoor (7.5%) Launches Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange
3 May 2012 | 11:47 amWe are proud to announce the launch of the CPO Outdoor (7.5%) Publisher Program On PepperJam Exchange Join this program NOW! About the CPO Outdoor Publisher Program: From lawn mowers to string trimmers, CPO Outdoor has new and factory reconditioned outdoor power equipment for all your outdoor jobs. CPO Outdoor features some of the top manufacturers of outdoor power equipment like: Black and Decker, WeedEater, Karcher and Poulon. • Up to 7.5% commission. • Regularly updated Banners, text links, and product catalogs • Dedicated Affiliate Manager • 7 different payment options available…
-
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
-
Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links
16 May 2012 | 12:00 pmHinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. -
With Fix In Place, Wolfram Alpha Explains How Siri “Recommended” The Lumia By Mistake
16 May 2012 | 10:15 amIt wasn’t Siri that was recommending the Lumia as the best smartphone to some last week; it was Wolfram Alpha. That won’t happen again, now that Wolfram Alpha has made changes to to fix problems it had dealing with customer reviews. Reviews Weren’t Weighted To Account For Number... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. -
3 Guidelines To Scale Your SEM Team
16 May 2012 | 9:03 amThere is a phenomenon within organizations that causes productivity to decline as teams grow larger. This phenomenon is described in economics as a diseconomy of scale and is caused by at least three factors including increased communication costs, duplication of effort, and top-heavy management.... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. -
Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories
16 May 2012 | 8:44 amYesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. -
Do Search & Display Really Belong Together?
16 May 2012 | 8:27 amThe premise is simple – PPC and display are both media buys trying to achieve similar outcomes; both are forms of ‘bought media’ and now with display moving to a biddable environment both now require quantitative skill sets to manage them. It’s not a tough sell to convince a budget holder that a... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
-
Search Engine Journal
-
A Keen Mind in Sheep’s Clothing
16 May 2012 | 1:00 pmZuckerberg moves almost as fast as you can say “hoodie.” While we were feasting our eyes on the media’s fascination regarding Mark’s choice in clothing, Facebook donned itself in two more acquisitions. I say ‘more,’ in reference to the few-week lapse in acquisitions; as we all have heard, Facebook acquired startup Instagram as of late. [...] -
‘Relevancy is King’ Says Google VP at SMX London
16 May 2012 | 11:00 amIn his opening keynote at SMX London, Amit Singhal, VP and Google Fellow, who rewrote the original Google algorithm upon his hire in 2000, said today that “Relevancy is King”. He added that Google looks at a combination of three signals (links, social, user actions) and how those signals support each other to build the [...] -
Facebook Update: Higher Target IPO Price Resulting in Stakeholder Liquidation
16 May 2012 | 9:51 amOn Tuesday, the world’s largest social network raised the target IPO price range to $34 to $38. If Facebook shares sell at the upper limit ($38), the social network will raise about $12.8 billion and its market value will be approximately $104 billion. As a result of the higher target price and rich valuation, a [...] -
Why Did GM Drop Facebook Advertising?
16 May 2012 | 7:33 amI am sure you heard yesterday that GM stopped investing in ad space on Facebook. New research on Facebook advertising performance from WordStream may offer a few clues as to why General Motors discontinued advertising on the massive social network. Wordstream’s research provides some important data such as: Ad Performance: Click through rates on Facebook [...] -
5 Local Resources to Boost Your Local Rankings
15 May 2012 | 1:00 pmLocal search engine optimization (SEO) is a specialized form of SEO focused on optimizing businesses and their websites for optimal visibility in local search engines. Local search takes into consideration not only the keyword the searcher entered, but also the location of the searcher, whether indicated through user settings, automatic detection, or a location in [...]
-
Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips
-
Is Mother Nature Causing Stormy Sales? Weather Underground Shows How Weather Impacts Your Bottom Line
16 May 2012 | 10:31 amIs bad weather good for business? Or is good weather a pain in the bottom line? Weather Underground has launched what may be the first of its kind — a tool that lets marketers track sales against local weather conditions. It’s called “Sales Tracker,” and it’s part of a... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article. -
“Optimizing” Pre-Image Optimization
16 May 2012 | 10:16 amThe harsh truth on email image blocking comes as one of the earliest lessons in email design. It’s hardly a new one, though, and we have a standard best practices short list to “optimize for images-off” — use live text for copy, include alternative text on images, make buttons bulletproof and... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article. -
Report: Google+ Engagement Down, 30% of Users Publicly Post Won’t Post Again
15 May 2012 | 8:47 pmYes, Google+ has 170 million users, but just how active are they? A recent report from RJ Metrics suggests that based on public posts from 40,000 Google Plus accounts, engagement is poor. The average public Google+ post is seeing less than one +1, less than one reply and less than one re-share.... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article. -
Ahead Of IPO, GM Drops Facebook Ads; Forrester Warns Other Companies May Follow
15 May 2012 | 4:34 pmIt couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Facebook, which has its initial public offering of stock later this week. General Motors has decided to stop advertising on the social networking giant, citing concerns about the site’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, a Forrester analyst says... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article. -
Marketing Day: May 15, 2012
15 May 2012 | 4:01 pmHere’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Report: Social Ad Spending Expected To Double By 2016 Social media ad spending is expected to double in the U.S. between now and 2016,... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
-
ISEdb.COM
-
Facebook to Open Storefront …. its Apps!
14 May 2012 | 6:00 amWith a $100 billion valuation to justify Facebook has been under investor pressure to increase revenue streams. Last month Silicon Valley’s VC firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and Wall Street biggies like Goldman Sachs recommended that Facebook start off its online stores like eBay and Amazon. Facebook it appears is taking the investors seriously. It unveiled a brand new hub for its users to find games and apps on its pages…..which is not too many currently considering its massive audience. However that could change with Facebook now deciding to start off a metric for… -
How to Engage and Keep Social Media Followers
9 May 2012 | 12:53 pmSome businesses are so concerned with getting social media followers that they forget that what’s really important is keeping these social media followers. Social followers aren’t locked into any kind of contract. It’s just as easy to unfollow a brand in social media as it is to initially click the “Like” or “Follow” button. The key to social media success is keeping your social followers happy and engaged, which will improve the chances of these followers becoming something more like a client or a customer. Here are 5 tips to engage and keep social media followers: Find a the… -
Edu Search Moves Away From ‘Wild Google Chase’
3 May 2012 | 9:57 amGoogle search or Bing that throws up a million plus options at every keyword are algorithm based generalized search that is useful only when you know what to look for. What if you don’t? The maze of options that Google throws up could easily put you on a wild goose chase….. or a ‘wild Google chase’ This is especially true for people who are looking for focused solutions in any discipline like education, travel, construction, real estate or medical science. As Google or its competitors fail to provide focused solutions when it comes specialized search there is a new breed of search… -
Mobile Social Grows Fastest
26 Apr 2012 | 2:21 pmMove over print media, television and internet news. The hand held social media powered by smartphones is fast overtaking any other form of media communication. Google search by mobile users is growing at an astonishing pace of 30% year on year. The Twitter # hash tag search is becoming the most popular mode of logging into current events happening across the world. A US baseball event, a football match in the English Premium League or cricket extravaganza in the Indian Premium League could attract a million plus tweets within a few hours. A disruption of the civic services, an airline… -
Mobile and Search push Digital Ad Growth
19 Apr 2012 | 10:48 amInternet advertising revenue shot up by 22% and mobile ads jumped by nearly 3 times during the year 2011 as per a Price Waterhouse Coopers PwC report prepared for the Internet Advertising Bureau. IAB is an association of 500 top media and tech companies revealed that ad revenues soared to $31 billion in 2011 as against $26 billion last year. Mobile ads that were rather miniscule at $0.6 billion last year jumped to$1.6 billion. This is an increasing sign of advertiser’s gradual shift to digital media platforms in a world that is being increasingly dominated by the mobile phone and the…
-
Internet Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing
-
Google and YouTube Reinforce Video as Future of Web
16 May 2012 | 10:58 amAs part of their commemoration of their 10th anniversary, Google is reminiscing about the past and looking to the future of the Web through regular blog entries. Recently, Chad Hurley, the CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube, wrote a guest entry called, “The Future of Online Video.” Chad notes that, “What used to be a gap between ‘professional’ entertainment companies and home movie buffs has disappeared. Everyone from major broadcasters and networks to vloggers and grandmas are taking to video to capture events, memories, stories, and much more in real time.”… -
Using Web Directory Submission to Promote Your Site
15 May 2012 | 10:54 pmIf you’ve recently launched a blog or website, you’re probably looking for ways to promote it. Arguably, the single most important aspect of website promotion for a new site is Web directory submission. This strategy can work in conjunction with link exchanges, article submissions, and even traffic exchanges. Each of these is highly effective but works in a slightly different way. With Web directory submission, you are providing links to your website. All of the links sent to a website directory submission are indexed according to the appropriate category and subcategory. From… -
Internet Marketing through Banner Ads
15 May 2012 | 10:52 amTo push past your competition and achieve success with an online business, you need targeted traffic. One of the best ways to use Internet marketing to drive traffic to your website is through banner advertising. Banners are small, clickable ads that contain graphics and other relevant information. They are effective because people tend to notice visual elements before they begin reading website content. In other words, banner ads are eye-catching. Banner advertising is a straightforward form of Internet marketing. For instance, there are websites that offer banner advertising services. -
Is Microsoft Nimble Enough to Keep Pace?
14 May 2012 | 11:12 pmDan Kimerling over at TechCrunch.com posted a great piece on the Washington Post’s website (washingtonpost.com) about the dilemma that Microsoft faces. Essentially, he posits that the software behemoth may not be nimble enough to keep pace with what Gen Yers want from their computing experience. Dan correctly notes that Web applications like those offered by Facebook, Google Docs, and Zoho are popular with the younger crowd because they’re both powerful and easy to use, and can be used collaboratively to publish in digital environments. He ends with an insightful analysis that… -
Effective Pop Under Advertising
14 May 2012 | 10:51 amIf you’ve ever visited a website and been inundated with pop up ads, then you’ve experienced the annoyance of all that blinking, flashing, and brightness. To avoid the problem, you probably have some type of pop up blocker in place. So do millions of other people. From an Internet marketing perspective, the problem is that pop ups can be beneficial when it comes to building a competitive website – but only if potential customers see them. For this reason, many companies are now choosing pop under advertising, which serves the same purpose without driving customers away. With…
-
Search Engine Watch - Latest
-
Life After Google Penguin – Going Beyond the Name
16 May 2012 | 8:00 amDon't try too hard to look for dates and names of updates. Rather, look more to the effects as Google’s algorithm evolves so you can adapt accordingly. What really matters is that Google is looking harder at link spam now, so you should be too. -
7 Time-Saving Google Analytics Custom Reports
16 May 2012 | 6:00 amThe right Custom Reports can be incredible time savers. Instead of spending time digging around for important metrics, you can find what you need separated neatly into columns for some analysis that will lead to some actionable insight. -
Piwik Open Source Analytics: A Primer
16 May 2012 | 4:00 amWith a focus on privacy and keeping data safe, Piwik is a web analytics package that aims to be a free software alternative to Google Analytics. Here are some of Piwik’s features and how it compares to other top-billing analytics packages. -
Make Second Tier Search Engines Part of Your Lead Generation Strategy
16 May 2012 | 2:00 amGoogle and Bing can only get you so far. If you work in an extremely competitive industry you may find yourself paying anywhere from $30 to $50+ per click. Working with second tier engine/networks can provide an abundance of traffic at a low cost. -
Social Media Ad Spending Forecast to Hit $9.8 Billion by 2016
16 May 2012 | 12:00 amSocial media advertising revenues in the U.S. will grow from $3.8 billion in 2011 to $9.8 billion in 2016, according to BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Forecast (2011-2016). The leap would represent a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent.
-
Internet Marketing News Watch
-
‘Google’s Penguin Update: What We Know So Far’ SEO Braintrust Webinar 7.00 pm EST
16 May 2012 | 1:14 amSEO Braintrust is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, May 16 at 7.00 pm EST. The topic of the webinar is "Google's Penguin Update: What We Know So Far". [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
‘Perfect Funnel System’ Bryan Dulaney’s Webinar May 17
16 May 2012 | 1:11 amBryan Dulaney is hosting a webinar on Thursday, May 17 at 8.00 pm EST. The topic of the webinar is "Perfect Funnel System". [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
‘Pimp your web page titles in 6 easy steps’ – ‘Axandra Search Engine Facts’
16 May 2012 | 1:11 amThe latest issue of 'Axandra Weekly Search Engine Facts' has been released. The featured article titled "Pimp your web page titles in 6 easy steps". [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Covert Geo Targeter WP Plugin Improves Sales from blogs #ad
16 May 2012 | 1:01 amAnother covert tool from the trio that brought us Covert Messenger and Covert Action Bar, John Merrick, Soren Jordansen and Cindy Battye. Covert Geo Targeter takes its cue from the dating sites that know where you live and customize the sales page/opt-in page with your home town. They get more clicks when they do that. Suppose [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
‘Google Penguin 1.1 Update Underway? Nope’ – ‘Search Engine Roundtable’ Newsletter
16 May 2012 | 12:59 amThe latest issue of 'Search Engine Roundtable' newsletter has been released. The featured article is titled "Google Penguin 1.1 Update Underway? Nope". [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
-
The Search Agents
-
The Week We Searched For- May 11, 2012
11 May 2012 | 2:56 pmBing revamps search- Microsoft launched an updated version of its Bing search engine this week with a new design and new features aimed at better integrating search and social networking. The new design focuses on three main pillars: Core Search, Snapshot, and Sidebar panels. Core Search focuses on organic search results and will omit many of the social features currently included in Bing results. Snapshot provides further information about a particular results directly on the SERP. Sidebar is a new social navigation features that allows users to better integrate their search and… -
Interview with Cassandra Caswell-Stirling
10 May 2012 | 10:27 amThe Search Agency: How did you find your way to search marketing? Cassandra: I definitely didn’t take the most direct route into search marketing; that’s for sure. I was actually, once upon a time, supposed to be a lawyer, but after graduating from law school and working in two different law firms for 4 years, I decided to try something a little more creative. I began working for a small legal publisher on two of their online products. From there the small publisher was bought by Oxford University Press, and I began working on a larger variety of legal print and online products. -
Google Increases Transparency in Quality Scores
8 May 2012 | 1:51 pmMy experiences with most Google releases are typically a roller coaster of emotions. They start with sheer terror, transition into a “Protect This House” mentality and end with triumphant high-fiving after taming the beast and hopefully increasing effectiveness of each campaign. Inevitably once calm has returned to my adWords life, there is another release around the corner and I am again faced with a panic attack and more work. Google’s recent announcement caught me off guard, however, as it didn’t actually change the performance of anything in my accounts. Instead, it provided… -
The Week We Searched For- April 30-May 2, 2012
4 May 2012 | 4:12 pmGoogle launches Panda 3.6- Google has confirmed it launched another Panda update on April 27th, only 8 days after Panda 3.5. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land received confirmation on Panda 3.6 from Google and shared the following statement from the company: We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year. Google launches Penguin- Google has introduced a new animal to its zoo of algorithmic updates last week. … -
eRetailers Winning Customers at the Zero Moment of Truth
3 May 2012 | 6:07 pmThe Search Agency recently hosted a webinar with eTail on the importance of leveraging the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) to influence consumer buying behavior and drive sales. Raquel Krouse, Social Media Lead at The Search Agency, and Joe Nolan, Director of New Media at Men’s Wearhouse, discussed how new trends in online marketing are changing how consumers acquire, apply, and are influenced by branded knowledge at ZMOT. Krouse explains how increased consumer connectivity across devices and the mass of highly accessible, free information is changing consumer behavior. Today, consumers are…
-
eMarketer Articles and Blog Posts
-
Article: TV Viewers Carry the Conversation to Social Networks
15 May 2012 | 11:01 pmAlmost one in five viewers starts watching a show after reading about it online -
Article: Mobile Social Network Usage Catches Fire in France
15 May 2012 | 11:01 pmAs the post-election fervor winds down, social networks remain at the forefront in France -
Article: Mobile Phone Shoppers Show Growing Preference for Text Marketing
15 May 2012 | 11:01 pmOne in five respondents has made an online purchase on a mobile phone -
Article: Facebook Adoption High, Ad Rates Low in Spain
14 May 2012 | 11:01 pmWhile usage is high, ad rates in Spain are lower than the worldwide average -
Article: Millennials Lead the Quest for Mobile-Enabled, Just-in-Time Information
14 May 2012 | 11:01 pmConsumer demand for instant information underscores the importance of mobile search for marketers
-
Posts about Search Marketing - Organic/Natural (SEO) from the Econsultancy blog
-
Successful content marketing doesn’t require a zoo
16 May 2012 | 4:50 amContent marketing requires many things to be successful; luckily a Zoo isn’t one of them. That said, you can definitely learn a thing or two from “We bought a Zoo” author Benjamin Mee. I won’t bore you with all the details of who Benjamin is, but if you’re interested you should visit the Dartmoor Zoological Park website or watch this short video. Benjamin’s book was published in 2008. Since then it has become a film and the Zoo has enjoyed a significant amount of interest from the world’s media. This isn’t a typical content… -
Demand for digital marketing freelancers soars: trends
15 May 2012 | 4:25 amHiring online freelancers for marketing roles and projects is a trend that has experienced significant growth over the last year. We’ve seen a 106% increase in digital marketing jobs posted on Elance for the 12 months leading up to March 2012. And, the increase from UK businesses was even greater (124%). There has also been a 215% increase in marketing jobs completed and a 188% increase in client spend. In the first of a series of monthly posts, I'll look at more trends in digital marketing jobs...UK marketers are using digital marketing freelancers more than other countries. In March… -
Sears site review: the good, the bad and the ugly
14 May 2012 | 10:03 amI've been taking a look at the Sears website from a user experience perspective to see what the retailer does well online, and where it can improve. I've highlighted some excellent features on the site that other online retailers could learn from, some relatively minor irritations that would annoy users, and problems that may make users abandon the site. Overall, the site performs well and contains some excellent features, such as proactive use of live chat. However, even with the best sites, there is always room for improvement... The good Nice big search box One of the… -
What do you think of Econsultancy?
14 May 2012 | 5:45 amWe'd like you to help us improve the content and services on Econsultancy, and boost the amount we donate to Save the Children at the same time. Econsultancy's 2012 user survey is the first we have carried out since 2009, and we will donate £3/$5 for every completed response. We like to think we're pretty good at spotting trends and working out the kinds of services, content and events that digital marketers want to see, but sometimes there's no substitute for asking your users directly. The survey is completely anonymous. We'd like to know: How do you use… -
Is Google really going to rely more on social media signals in the future?
14 May 2012 | 4:57 amWith many people thinking that social media will become an increasingly important SEO weapon, we examine its likely importance in the long term. When you speak with SEO experts, the hot topic is how social media signals are going to be used increasingly by Google to determine the authority of a website. It’s believed that the number of Facebook “likes”, Twitter followers, Google +1’s and even You Tube channel views you have, the more credence you could gain from Google.It has a ring of truth. After all, Google has for years taken more notice of how others regard you…
-
SMS
-
(Not Provided) Keywords Are On The Rise
16 May 2012 | 1:09 pmLast fall, Google launched encrypted search which was intended to make search results more secure for users. Users that conduct a search while signed in to a Google account are sent to a more secure version of the site when they perform a search. The websites that they land on will know that they came from organic search, but won’t be given information about each individual query, including the keywords that brought a visitor to the site. Google Analytics has always been the go-to for examining the success of an SEO campaign and entrance keywords have always provided insights into the… -
Make The Most Of Visual Elements In Marketing Campaigns
15 May 2012 | 12:29 pmThe challenge for marketers is to stand out from the pack by telling their stories in a compelling way. With many of the image-based tools now available online such as Pinterest and Instagram, it’s not only easy to tell your story visually, it’s also extremely easy for users to contribute their own images or to share your images and videos with their friends. Visual storytelling is an effective way to cut through the clutter of information overload online. Here are some tips on how to effectively incorporate these visual elements into your next marketing campaign: 1. Tell Stories… -
Avoid The Squint & Pinch: Improving Customer Experience With Mobile Landing Pages
14 May 2012 | 2:13 pmCustomer feedback is one of the most valuable ways we can stay in touch with our market, and to make sure we are meeting the expectations of the lifeblood of our businesses. In a world gone digital, with resources such as Marketing Automation tools, Email Service Providers, services offering pre-designed and programmed landing pages, the customer feedback survey is easier than ever to deploy. Recently, I received this email requesting feedback on a company’s Customer Service. A great example of how to connect with customers. The email was… Clear in its Purpose: The subject line… -
Five For Friday — May 7-11, 2012
11 May 2012 | 1:18 pmLots of grumbling this week all over about the Penguin update effects and much discussion about how Google’s emphasis on “over optimization” will change how online marketers do things. Still too early to really understand all the implications, but here’s five of the most interesting and informative news items from the week. 1. The Best and Worst Times to Share on Facebook, Twitter — Samantha Murphy blogs at Mashable about the good and bad times of the day to announce content on social media properties Twitter and Facebook. 2. Manage multiple locations more… -
Infographics And The Power Of Lists
10 May 2012 | 11:16 amHave I got a list for you – this week’s infographic column. Yes, it’s the old list format that’s already been played out in blogging for some time now. It’s time we address this commonly used blogging tactic in more of a visual format. I’m sure you’ve seen top 10 lists in your blog and content strategy for some time. But why not go one step further and visualize this? List infographics might be less data-heavy than traditional infographics, but they still generate quite a bit of interest in their own right. This infographic below shows how to brain hack the…
-
The SEM Blog
-
Essential Excel Tools for Writing PPC Ads
15 May 2012 | 10:17 amGuest Blogger: Laura Rodnitzky is the Director of Production for PPC Associates, a search engine marketing agency with offices in San Mateo and Chicago. Writing PPC ads can be fun – using your brain to shoehorn great messaging into a limited number of characters is like doing puzzles. The parts of the copy-creation process that get really tedious are the repetitive acts – checking character count obsessively, combing the text to make sure your capitalization preferences are followed, appending the same word over and over. There’s good news, though – Excel has some handy features you… -
Quantitative Effects of the Penguin Police
10 May 2012 | 11:46 amPenguin sparked fear in many SEOers, with blog posts like Anatomy of a Disaster, Penguins, Pandas and Panic at the Zoo, and innumerable accounts of sites losing over half of their traffic. Penguin is Google’s latest search algorithm update, and is supposed to level the playing field – increasing ranking for websites that have great content but aren’t well-optimized for the search engines, and penalize websites with less great content that are over-optimized for the machines. Facts dispel fear (or at worst justify it and indicate a path towards greener pastures), so I… -
Pinterest: Why it’s worth the investment, and how to get your ROI
26 Apr 2012 | 1:34 pmIf you’re the person in charge of social media at your company, Pinterest may cause you to groan and look for excuses to opt out of maintaining yet another communication channel. Unfortunately Pinterest is increasingly looking like a medium marketers shouldn’t ignore; fortunately, it also looks like a medium that delivers significant ROI, and might not require the level of investment required by Facebook or a blog. A Medium Marketers Can’t Ignore: In 3 Charts 1) Pinterest is a $7.7 Billion Company, and “appeals to college-educated females between the ages of 25 to 44. A sweet… -
HOWTO: Handle Negative Online Business Reviews Like a Pro
18 Apr 2012 | 9:54 amLet’s face it, online reviews can make you or break you. People rely more than ever on online review sites before making purchases or doing business with a company. If you’re not already monitoring reviews of your company then it’s time to start. Claim Any Listings Floating Around the Web The first thing you should do as a business owner is be sure to “claim” your local listings so you can have full control over the details and this also enables you to respond to reviews as a business owner. Popular review sites you should search for your business listing on include Google Places,… -
The Familiarity Effect: PPC vs Organic Search
12 Apr 2012 | 9:44 amDave Underwood of Topspot Internet Marketing spoke on “Improving Website Measurement & Analytics” at the HiMA luncheon last week in Houston, Texas. He offered useful insight for successful marketing, some of it surprisingly simple. For example, recording and listening to phone calls: if your sales people give inaccurate information or fail in some other way to appropriately respond to potential customers, it really doesn’t matter if your marketing campaign generates 100 leads from Fortune 500 companies – the sales people are not converting the leads. He also touched on the hot…
-
97th Floor: SEO, Viral Marketing & Social Media Blog » Blog
-
Overcrowded Industries – Content Marketing Friday
27 Apr 2012 | 12:22 pmI read a great blog post the other day from Jason Acidre about Viral Marketing for Boring Industries. This kind of stuff is always right up my alley. Especially with some of latest Google updates, we should all be more focused on how to turn our content into something more spectacular. Heck, we ran Viral [...] -
Pinterest Marketing 2.0 : The Site has Changed and So Should Your Strategies
19 Apr 2012 | 3:34 pmChange. It’s a word that we all hate yet have to adapt to throughout life. I hate change, but as a marketer I have to stay on top of any new technologies or updates that are thrown my way. Similar to Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is finally changing its algorithm to combat the onslaught of spammers and [...] -
Instructographic Marketing on Pinterest
14 Apr 2012 | 6:46 pmWhen it comes to marketing on Pinterest the game has changed in the recent weeks regarding the recent algorithm change. In the past, it was possible to submit to your account every two hours and still make it to the category page. The category page is an essential for having your instructographics seen and shared [...] -
Content Marketing Friday: Hooking Boring Industries Up with Viral Bling!
13 Apr 2012 | 3:15 pmWelcome to the return of 97th Floor’s Content Fridays! If you haven’t met me yet, my name is Colby Almond and I like to think of myself as a ninja when it comes to turning boring things into traffic. If you work in a “boring” industry and use that as an excuse for not marketing [...] -
Announcing the Return of “Viral Marketing Friday” with a Name-Twist
10 Apr 2012 | 3:59 pmWe’re very excited to announce the return of one of our favorite segments we used to do here! Viral Marketing Friday is back and now known as Content Marketing Friday, where we’ll be taking suggestions from our readers on boring and overdone topics and turning them into killer, useable ideas. Yeah, it’s THAT epic! We [...]
-
John W. Ellis
-
Say No to AdWords “improved” Phrase and Match Types … for now
27 Apr 2012 | 8:55 amIt’s been quite a busy week for Google AdWords. There have been lots of PPC changes. Most for good, but then there is the “improvements” to match types. Google announced new matching behavior for phrase and exact match keywords on April 17th. According to the announcement: “This will change soon. Starting in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.”… -
Target Marketing: Brilliant or Creepy?
16 Apr 2012 | 3:06 pmI am no stranger to speaking on remarketing. In fact, it’s one of my favorite features that Google has introduced over the past several years. It’s powerful, selective, and … yet, to some, slightly creepy marketing. Over the past weekend I spoke about remarketing at PodCamp Nashville. Below is my presentation. I would love to know your thoughts. Brilliant or Creepy? Target Marketing: Brilliant or Creepy? – PodCamp Nashville 2012 Here are a few of tips I highlighted on being less creepy with remarketing: Use a Variety of Images – In many cases, image ads perform better than text… -
Site Review: Nashville Symphony
3 Apr 2012 | 10:21 pmI have another volunteer for my series of site reviews. These series have turned out to be quite a hit. The real gems are in the comments. So please leave your nuggets of information below. Nancy VanReece, Social Media Strategist and Website Manager for the Nashville Symphony, has asked that “we” take a look at their site. The Nashville Symphony is a big presence in Nashville with a dedication to the musical arts and education. Please visit their site and check out a great performance, led by Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero. However, as great as they are in music, can we say the same… -
New AdWords Enhancements
25 Mar 2012 | 5:31 pmThere have been quite a few changes to Google AdWords over the past month, below is a brief summary. As always, let me know if you have any questions. New Display Network Tab -
PodCamp Nashville: Let the Tour Begin
14 Mar 2012 | 11:15 pmPodCamp Nashville is April 14th. If you are not familiar with the event, check out the details here: www.PodCampNashville.org. With the first post in the Blog Tour, I wanted to start off with some basic answer to common questions about PodCamp Nashville. What is PodCamp? PodCamp is a free “unconference” hosted by volunteers. It’s the one of the largest online marketing conferences in the South and a great event for the city of Nashville. PodCamp Nashville welcomes digital enthusiasts of various backgrounds and industries. Who Attends? In 2011, PodCamp had over 700 registered attendees.
-
B2B Search Engine Marketing & Social Media Blog | KoMarketing Associates » Search Engine Marketing Blog
-
About SEO Shortcuts, SEO Tools, and Productive SEO Campaign Development
11 May 2012 | 10:09 amEarlier this week, Seth Godin wrote a catchy blog post about how to make money online. While there were several worthy points to remember, one that stuck out to me was, “Hang out with people who aren’t looking for shortcuts. Learn from them.“. SEO is filled with the notion that there are shortcuts. When I first started SEO consulting it felt like the reason a large percentage of companies were interested in SEO was because they believed it was a shortcut to online marketing success (it was free, right?). They forgot the time element that factored into the cost of “good… -
Defining Link Metrics that Impact SEO Link Building Development
30 Apr 2012 | 8:42 amAs SEO becomes more involved in the marketing initiatives of the organization, search marketing professionals work in greater coordination with additional team members and departments. Last week our SEO team met with an organization’s marketing communications team. The goal being defining opportunities for outreach and understanding how we could assist in an effort to acquire high quality links. It is interesting how our teams use different metrics in evaluating opportunities, but still seek to provide similar outcomes. We all want our clients and organizations to receive quality… -
8 More Compelling Infographics About Content Marketing
20 Apr 2012 | 10:26 amContent marketing is argued to be the “heartbeat” of many companies’ marketing efforts, without original intriguing content it is difficult for successful efforts to be delivered by a brand. There are many content marketing related infographics available to aid the understanding of its importance for today’s marketer. Not only can an infographic explain the value of content marketing, but also illustrate tactical recommendations associated to the B2B marketers’ strategy with content development initiatives. The following is a small compilation of graphics including insight into… -
Out with the Old, In with the New: Making Google’s Privacy Policy Work for You
9 Apr 2012 | 9:43 amGoogle’s new privacy policy, implemented at the beginning of March, has sparked a series of charges and countercharges about how the tech giant may be impinging on users’ privacy. To date, Google has found itself the target of multiple state Attorneys General allegations, voiced concern by members of Congress, and, most recently, a wave of class-action lawsuits claiming the policy not only violates users’ privacy rights, but that it also constitutes computer fraud and abuse. However, the new policy, which allows Google to synchronize data across all its services (Gmail, search… -
9 Key Points About Google+ Pages for Business for the B2B Marketer
2 Apr 2012 | 9:08 amEarlier this year, we began putting together a strategic recommendation for our clients on Google+ Pages for Business. This new solution blends elements of popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter with social sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube, integrating search engine optimization and marketing into the Google network of sites. While they were new and trendy, Google+ Pages had several flaws. Most of the immediate flaws have since been addressed, including the ability to add multiple page managers and verification with site and organization. However even though Google…
-
The Search Engine Marketing Blog @ MoreVisibility
-
Google Adds More New Updates to AdWords Campaign Settings
8 May 2012 | 6:43 amGoogle AdWords recently announced an update to its Campaign settings for keyword matchings. Now they have said that its ad rotation setting will also change. Previously, AdWords offered three ad rotation settings: optimize for clicks, optimize for conversions, and rotate evenly. Below is a screenshot of the old Ad rotation settings: Google says that starting [...] -
New Updates to Google AdWords Phrase and Exact Match-Type Keywords
4 May 2012 | 7:55 amGoogle AdWords recently updated matching behavior to two of the three match types. In the past, Google had three distinct match types: broad, phrase and exact. Now, Google says that phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Previously, advertisers had to manually add all of [...] -
Use Location Insertion in Your PPC Ads to Increase Exposure for Local Listings
16 Apr 2012 | 9:45 amGoogle AdWords recently announced that they added enhancements to their location targeting capabilities to make location targeting clearer and more powerful. Now, they are introducing location insertion for location extensions. With Location Insertion, advertisers will no longer need to create multiple ads for multiple locations. Location insertion for location extensions automatically inserts the city, phone [...] -
Google AdWords Updates Its Location Targeting Feature
9 Apr 2012 | 8:05 amGoogle AdWords has announced that it is implementing new enhancements to its location targeting capabilities to make location targeting clearer and more powerful. The first update re-words the targeting options to make them easier to understand for advertisers. In the past, this was the option for advanced location targeting: If you were targeting using the [...] -
Now You Can See Conversions Associated to Google AdWords Ad Extensions
5 Apr 2012 | 8:19 amSo you have implemented every possible Google AdWords Ad extension from Social Extensions to Product Extensions, but have been unable to see if these add-ons are actually bringing in conversions to your site – until now. Google has added conversion tracking metrics to the Ad extensions tab of the User Interface. To see conversions in [...]
-
SEM Insights
-
SEO Testing – Including SEO in Test Strategy
29 Apr 2012 | 10:30 pmI recently that the honour of presenting at eMetrics.org as a keynote speaker. I am delighted that no-one felt the overwhelming need to leave during my 50 minute discourse, and while I’m sure the fact that I was handing out money played a small role) ‘just click ‘back’ to get back to the post’, I have to say it was a pleasure to have such an engaged and interactive audience! That said, I wanted to mention how I sneakily included some SEO conversion testing into the presentation, particularly because the test is rather unusual as far as I know, and requires a… -
A Different Post – IQ Measures
18 Oct 2011 | 11:40 pmA long time ago I was a MENSA member. I liked feeling ‘clever’. But, it has an annual renewal fee, and with the advent of 3 very demanding children plus moving countries (and credit cards), the membership lapsed. My post is 2 fold: A personal explanation of why I think having that type of membership is important, both in a personal and in a business vein, and Sharing an example of a test question I got right, and one that totally stumped me. Can you get them both right? If you have no interest in IQs or IQ testing, this is not for you. Why I decided to try MENSA in the first… -
Paid Search & SEO Snake-Oil Salesmen…
1 Aug 2011 | 3:51 amMost of you folks who read this regularly know I am a professor and subject matter expert for the Online Advanced SEM Course and Masters Certification courses for USF. Some of my experiences as such form the basis of this post: While many students who take the course/s are relatively new to the industry, some are veterans and are just looking to get the qualification (not a bad one to have as the market keeps growing and companies start asking for qualifications). But sometimes we get a savvy young entrepreneur or busy owner who has spent a fortune (literally) on paid search campaigns with… -
Global Search Engine Marketing: 2 Minute Interview with Laura – SES Toronto
6 Jul 2011 | 10:50 pmSES Toronto was a superlative conference this year – as usual. Great sessions, great people and awesome networking. Apart from my session on Global Search Marketing, I was intereviewed by Greg Jarboe, President and Co-founder of SEO-PR. It was the smoothest, most convivial interview I have had to date and I wanted to share it with you (2 minutes). -
International SEO for eCommerce – Global Websites
19 May 2011 | 4:03 pmI was recently interviewed by Linda Bustos of ElasticPath.com’s blog Get Elastic. The topic of the interview was SEO for Global eCommerce websites and I wanted to share the questions and answer snippets here for SEMInsights awesome readers Linda: What are the top SEO concerns for global ecommerce websites? Laura: There are a number of challenges facing global ecommerce sites, but 3 high-level issues that seem to be universal include communication, testing, and clear planning and reporting structures and processes…. (Read more) Linda: A big decision for any webmaster is whether to…
-
The Invesp Blog: E-commerce and Landing page Optimization
-
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics [Infographic]
16 May 2012 | 12:47 amIf you run an e-commerce business, you must be aware of Shopping Cart Abandonment Statistics of your website. For those who have never heard of this term before, Shopping cart Abandonment rate is the percentage of shoppers who placed products in the Shopping Cart but did not complete the check-out process According to researches, the average Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate of e-commerce websites is 65.23%, which means that shoppers didn’t complete the checkout process 65 times out of 100. Our infographic on “Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics” covers some interesting facts about… -
Pinterest Driving Sales
13 May 2012 | 10:47 pmSo far we’ve avoided writing a post on that seemingly ubiquitous blog topic: Pinterest. Until today. In case you’ve landed here looking for Pinterest basics, here they are: Pinterest is a photo and video sharing social network. The site began 2011 with 10,000 users and finished the year with almost 10,000,000; good enough to make the Hitwise list of top ten social media sites, beating out LinkedIn and Google+. The Value of Pinterest for Ecommerce Businesses Pinterest users, or pinners, “pin” images of things they find interesting into their Pinterest account. If LinkedIn is the social… -
Webinar: Ecommerce Product Page Optimization
7 May 2012 | 12:08 pmNote: If you attend our webinars, you know that seating runs out very quick. We will limit registration to the first 100 participants. Date: Thu, May 17, 2012 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST How do you design your product pages to persuade visitors to convert? How do you measure the effectiveness of your existing product pages? We will use recent product page designs and MVT testing to demonstrate some of the essential principals of designing converting product pages. Learn how to: Prioritize calls to action on the page Emphasize “the add to cart” button… -
Google Adwords for Video’s Hidden Advantage
6 May 2012 | 10:36 pmAvailable only to select advertisers since September, 2011, Google recently completed the full launch of Google Adwords for Video. All advertisers now have the opportunity to launch a YouTube video ad campaign as easily as a regular Adwords campaign. Similar to Adwords’ pay-per-click model, Google’s TruView pricing for Adwords for Video means you only pay if your video is viewed for at least 30 seconds, regardless of how many times it’s played. With video producers now adept at delivering their message in the 15 second format that’s common for existing YouTube video ads,… -
Do Your Customers Trust Your Advertising?
29 Apr 2012 | 8:56 pmNielsen recently released the results of their latest Global Trust in Advertising Survey (see below). They did their first global survey in 2005 and the findings have since been used by marketers to underscore the high level of trust consumers have in earned advertising, otherwise known as word-of-mouth. Consumers are almost twice as likely to trust word-of-mouth – recommendations from family and friends – than advertising messages. Too often, with the release of new data that echoes past findings, we tend to glance over it with an “I knew that” attitude. But, while this…
-
eBay, ecommerce, life
-
What is it with Amazon’s Design?
28 Apr 2012 | 3:36 pmThe more I look at the Amazon.co.uk website I more I get confused by its design. I am not an usability expert, but the layout seems cluttered and I find the order they put the information confusing. Presumably Amazon are not short of advice and expertise on how to build product pages which convert, so I can only guess that they have done this on purpose. Take this page for example. I find the following things surprising The product description is all over the place. Why is technical details called technical details? Would it not be better to have all the description together Are… -
My top tips for selling more stock online
3 Mar 2012 | 4:32 pmLast year we managed more than to double our sales so I thought I would share some of the (frankly pretty basic) things that worked. Watch stock levels Pretty simple stuff really, but by having enough of the right products we saw an enormous uplift in sales. For example we went from selling 3 bath seats every day to about 30*. Sell on multiple online marketplaces If you don’t mind paying the fees, online marketplaces are an extremely easy way to generate more sales as they have a ready made, international audience. Our experience has been: International Amazon sites have been a huge… -
The law is an ass: Trading Standard’s Krazee rules for Online Retailers
28 Jan 2012 | 2:26 pmI had a visit from a trading standards officer the other day who had found some problems with the T&Cs on the Hello Baby website. Along with some fairly sensible advice, some of the rules in the Distance selling regulations are just bizarre. I’m not making this up! Sensible(ish) A customer has 7 days starting the day after the product was delivered to inform you that they wish to return the item. After this they must return the item within a reasonable period (i.e. unspecified). Refunds should include the postage the customer paid Items which have been returned or… -
Amazon: Are we creating a monster?
14 Jan 2012 | 3:29 pmThis week’s excitement was Hello Baby‘s Amazon.fr account being suspended as our order defect rate slightly exceeded Amazon’s 1% ‘target’*. We got a warning email (which contained no specific dates on when our account might be suspended) and then without so much as a by your leave, our account was suspended and I have no idea when it will get reinstated. This merely reinforced my feeling that Amazon is getting too powerful and this is not altogether healthy. As an online retailer that depends on Amazon for a large proportion of his business, this might seem a… -
Startup Advice for the Online Retailer
1 Jan 2012 | 9:43 amNo matter what the industry, the startup business manager has a long list of issues, task, and goals (both short and long-term) to keep in mind. It can make for a daunting job. With a small budget and likely with no sales teams, legal consuls, or contract management systems at his disposal, the manager must work to hire talent, raise capital, and turn an idea into a product or service. This is no less true in the world of online retail. Recently, I spoke with a colleague who is starting an online sports apparel business. His business plans to manufacture clothing items and then sell them…
-
ReelSEO Online Video Marketing Digest
-
TV Still Dominant Video Consumption Platform, For Now
16 May 2012 | 12:45 pmThe Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) just released a new report looking at the devices on which consumers consume video content. Not a big surprise that TV is still the number one platform. What may be surprising are the platforms that aren’t really contributing all that much to the overall. The CEA report, The Evolving Video Landscape, was conducted between February 22 and March 2, 2012. and created by CEA Market Research. The survey showed that 34% of US adults online are watching more video than they were last year and TV programming is up 28% because of the wide range of ways… -
Video Paywalls, Mobile Momentum, Optimizing Views & More [Reel Web #39]
16 May 2012 | 8:15 amThis week the Reel Web covers a lot of topics including YouTube’s venture into providing premium content, the stats on video sharing apps on mobile devices as well as a couple quick resources on monetizing your videos and looking at your video analytics. Click here to watch this video. YouTube Planning Premium Content Subscription – YouPayWall? YouTube may be bringing in some premium content that will be available to view with a subscription. Most of this content will likely be very popular on-demand content that is currently available via TV, however, there is speculation that this… -
Howcast Guides Viewer Interest & Discovery with New Site: CEO Jason Liebman Provides Insight [Interview]
16 May 2012 | 8:00 amProbably the most unheralded videos on the web are how-to videos, and yet, they are some of the most popular. And it’s easy to see why: no longer are people having to rely on written instructions, which can be confusing or be missing vital information, they can actually see the recipe being cooked, or the piano being played, or whatever skill people want to learn. Howcast.com, a video destination site that specializes in these videos, announced a retooling of their site today. We talked to Jason Liebman, co-founder and CEO of Howcast (below), who shed some light on the relaunch and… -
The Rise of Mid-Roll Means Good Things for Video Advertising
15 May 2012 | 10:45 amI was just perusing a report from FreeWheel that pertains to online video monetization for Q1 2012 and there were some surprising things in it. For example, mid-roll video ad placements are on the rise, but mostly due to more long form video content being available, not because they’re more effective, etc. Right now, I’m in the planning stages of my own original web series and length of each episode was a topic of discussion with the team (really, there’s just two of us at present). I’m leaning more toward a longer episode while the other person was thinking shorter. -
Engagement, Not Views, is Driving Today’s YouTube
14 May 2012 | 1:15 pmWe all are a bit guilty of checking out a video’s view count and using it as its one and only metric for success. Although more critical thinking has made view counts less important, it’s still the easiest way to judge a video’s success. But YouTube has apparently wised up in the last few months as they have spent money on premium content and are looking for as many advertisers as possible. This very interesting article from Ad Age using Comscore metrics shows that while total views have dropped from the highs of last year, the amount of time spent on YouTube has…
-
HigherVisibility
-
Top 5 Joomla SEO Plugin Extensions
16 May 2012 | 9:39 amDownloading free plugins takes about two minutes, so it’s worth it for a small business owner or blog owner to try a couple different plugins until the website is perfect. SEO plugins are a great way to help make sure you’re optimizing your content for search engines, but there are so many to different choices that it can feel overwhelming—especially if you own a Joomla site. Joomla sites are quickly becoming more and more popular because they are easy to use, easy to customize, and put a large emphasis on content management. However, it is necessary that a Joomla owner downloads at… -
Best Practices for Creating the Perfect Call to Action
15 May 2012 | 9:27 amGetting quality traffic to your website is tough enough, so it is important that you have a solid call to action in place so that you can turn these readers into buyers or into active participants of your website. A good call to action will help convert your traffic into buyers, which is the ultimate driving force behind any businesses. Unfortunately, creating a successful call to action isn’t easy. Think of it this way: If you’re a teacher, you might be able to get your students open up the homework assignment and take a look, but this doesn’t mean much if the homework doesn’t get… -
Is SEO More of a Science or an Art?
14 May 2012 | 9:21 amMost people as well as ideas and actions are put into one of two categories: science or art. In the past it has been believed that something in the science category is very logical or straightforward, whereas anything creative and arbitrary is an art. However, breaking things into two categories is just too easy. Some things are viewed as a science by some, an art by others, or something that many see as fitting into both categories. SEO is one of these things that can be classified into both categories. When SEO is a Science A science is something that uses facts. Science is usually… -
Silver Surfing, Part 2: Is The Google Illusion Real?
11 May 2012 | 10:15 amAs we ended part one of the first Silver Surfing piece, we asked ourselves how we’ve managed to become enslaved to Google’s randomly timed algorithm updates courtesy of Navneet Panda. Now that Pandas and Penguins are running rampant across cyberspace, it’s time to really look at where we are now in terms of web visibility and whether our future will be blessed with Google, or endowed with newer technology that body-slams the website slayer. Let’s dive right in. Panda vs. Zuckerberg Yes, millions of people still search the web daily seeking information from Alan Alda to Zimbabwe…
-
Content is Currency
-
How to Write a Landing Page that Really Sells
10 May 2012 | 9:56 amWhen we talk about creating compelling web content, it’s easy to get stuck with a focus on blog posts, SEO articles and main page content. But the term ‘content’ covers lots of other things, too – including landing pages. Whether these are ‘squeeze’ pages designed to get the visitor to submit their details, or a page that outlines a specific feature for a certain web query, landing pages are often the bread and butter of web promotion. So how come no one really talks about them? Well, we’re putting a stop to that. Let’s take a look at some top… -
Are You a Content Writer? Here are a Few Tips on Working with Graphic Designers
1 May 2012 | 4:49 pmAs a copywriter, chances are you are working with a hired graphic designer on a daily basis. It is important that you build a solid and smart relationship with your graphic designer. The reason why this is important is that not one, but two creative minds come together to produce a quality and effective piece of work. Communication and teamwork is imperative to get the best results. Graphic designers are your eyes and you are their words. To produce a seamless and a complimented piece, follow some of these suggestions: Meetings: Depending on the project, set meetings that accommodate the… -
Ten Ways Content Marketing Can Help Your Website Grow
30 Apr 2012 | 3:03 pmGoogle is releasing another update to their algorithm shortly and according to Matt Cutts, a senior Google engineer, it is all about high quality websites. Google are actively targeting sites with what they class as spam links and for a website to grow and evolve into a viable internet business today, content marketing is now undoubtedly the best way forward. Below, I underline ten ways content marketing can help your website grow 1. Content Creation – The creation of unique, quality content in itself has some very positive benefits for a website. Google is now more focused than ever as a… -
5 Questions to Ask Before Publishing Your Blog Posts as an eBook on Amazon
28 Apr 2012 | 6:27 pmThe five-year growth of eBook sales on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al has been staggering. Popularized in 2007 with the release of the Amazon Kindle eReader device, eBooks now account for more than 20% of all book sales by some estimates and more than that at some publishers. One of the reasons is the relative ease of getting one’s book distributed into a major store, like Amazon.com. Another factor is the shear volume of written content available, often in the form of accumulated blog posts. If you are one of those companies or individuals who have been diligently posting… -
How to De-Jargonize Your Web Content
27 Apr 2012 | 3:37 pmWhy You Should De-Jargonize – Avoiding Corporate Jargon with Content Industry jargon and corporate gobbledygook are the not-so-silent killers of company websites and blogs. Everybody in the world seems to know this … except, seemingly, people responsible for publishing content. If you want people to read your content and more importantly relate to it and act on it, you must speak their language, not yours. Jargon has an extremely negative impact on how content is received: Jargon obscures your message. Jargon makes your company seem aloof and unapproachable. It follows, then, that…
-
Search Marketing - Darin Carter
-
Google Penguin Update
9 May 2012 | 2:00 amHave you noticed lately that your rankings mysteriously vanished once Google released its new Penguin update? Well, you’re not the only one frustrated with disappearing search results. Since the Google Penguin update, Google has changed the game yet again in the SEO industry and has generated a huge buzz among SEOs and bloggers. The central purpose of the Penguin update, which was launched in late April, is to put a deep freeze on web spam in Google’s search results. The Penguin update is proposed to fight web spammers who use shady techniques to rank websites. However, research shows how… -
Social Marketing Wishes it Was Search Marketing
17 Apr 2012 | 2:00 amOver the last few years, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Youtube has been taking the Internet by storm. More people are going with the trend and focusing on social marketing and it’s quite understandable why. But what’s surprising is that marketers are ignoring search marketing in favor of using social media as a marketing strategy. There are many reasons why marketers are going with the social media route. First, social media really has the potential to snowball from small campaigns. Second, social media is one of the most cost effective ways to market your… -
How much was spent on Search Marketing in 2011
13 Mar 2012 | 9:46 pmIt is amazing how much was spent on Search Marketing in 2011. The world of advertising has changed greatly in the past decade, but now has become a completely different animal for most companies. Where print advertising, television commercials, and cable TV marketing were the primary allocation for most business budgets, today everything has changed. The modern business model is putting most of their money into search engine marketing and interactive advertising. This is not just a fleeting trend, but appears to be an overall paradigm shift in how advertising is changing with the global… -
Lead King Party
20 Feb 2012 | 1:52 pmI will be in Vegas for LeadsCon Feb 28th and 29th. If you see me, stop me and say hello !!! I will also be attending a Great Happy Hour Networking event Sponsored by BMIElite and CrushAds. Seems like these guys have been throwing some nice events, not just ones where you can’t even hear yourself talk or think, the kind were business gets done ! The Lead King Party is on February 28th at the Mario Barth at the Mirage – King INK – Tattoo Studio, Fashion and Bar Room. This is going to be interesting. Just go to LeadKingParty.Com and Signup to get your Name on the List ! -
On my way to ASW 2012
7 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pmIt’s 2012, a brand new year, time to Grind Hard … and start the year off right ! I’m in the air right now as I write this blog post and so glad that this flight has wifi !!! If your going to be at ASW and you run into me, don’t hesitate to stop and say hello, you never know what may come out of a simple conversation ! Ok, back to looking at my Adwords Account and all the Money i’m making AND spending !!! CYA in Vegas !!! Darin Incoming search terms:asw summit
-
Maine SEO Blog
-
Is There A Way to Unlike Multiple Facebook Pages at Once?
14 May 2012 | 11:56 amThere is no current way to delete all Facebook Pages you’ve liked at once. But, if you are anything like me, at times your news feed starts filling up with posts from pages you’ve totally forgotten that you even liked. Maybe you liked it to help support a friend, or maybe you liked it because there was a contest going on, but now you want to clean up your feed. Here is the easiest way to do it… Head to your Timeline and Click on ‘Likes.’ You will then land on the page shown below. This gives you a glimpse of some of your likes, by showing you the icons for the… -
Facebook Offers are Here! Facebook Free Offers for Business Pages
4 May 2012 | 1:41 pmWe speculated a while back that Facebook may be rolling out Offers to all business pages and as of today it looks like Facebook offers are here! Offers are really Facebook’s way of taking advantage of the coupon craze. The set up of offers is super easy to use. Below is the tour from Facebook on how to use Facebook offers. So, first off you find offers right in the same bar that you create all your other status updates. Circled below… After you click on the “offer, event +” button you will get a drop down of options. Choose “Offer.” They you will… -
4 Solutions for Scheduling Tweets and Facebook Posts: Which one is right for you?
30 Apr 2012 | 9:41 amWhile I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for everyone or every business, scheduling tweets and Facebook posts can be a great solution for those who simply cannot get to their social profiles during the peak hours their audience is online. That said, there are a ton of great options for scheduling posts, so it’s just a matter of finding one that’s the best for you! Simple solutions TweetDeck If you already use a social management tool like TweetDeck, then this simple solution might be for you. As long as you have the Twitter account(s) and Facebook account linked with your… -
Facebook Timeline for Business Pages – Facebook Profile Image Changes Size
24 Apr 2012 | 8:55 amYes, I know we just got done cleaning up all of our Facebook business pages and maxing out the new dimensions for the cover image and profile photo. But, Facebook has decided to switch it up again. Facebook sent out an update on the image size change in the weekly page update. “On April 26, we will be updating the size of the profile picture on all Pages. We are letting you know about this small change in advance so that you can update your profile picture on April 26. The new profile picture will be 160 x 160 pixels and will sit at 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels… -
3 Must-Read Blogs for the Aspiring Web Marketer in You
16 Apr 2012 | 5:38 amThere are hundreds of web marketing and SEO blogs out there and I subscribe to quite a few; but depending on my workload and – let’s face it – attention span, I only avidly read a handful. Here are my top 3 must-reads, as far as I’m concerned: Copyblogger If you ever have or ever will write – especially for the web – then you’re crazy not to read Copyblogger. Get insights, tips, and tricks from industry leaders on everything from blogging to SEO to email marketing. While you’re at it, make sure you also subscribe to their email…
-
Traffick: The Business of Search
-
This Week in Narcissism
14 May 2012 | 3:55 pmIf you ever make the mistake, as I recently did, of reading Twenge and Campbell’s The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in an Age of Entitlement, you’ll have more than a few “whoa! that’s scary!” moments, when you begin recognizing vivid examples of the shift they’ve documented as they happen in slow motion in day-to-day life. Scary, as in “they really got that right.” This study of the rise in narcissistic qualities in the general (especially, youth) population is no casual observation. The authors actually document rises in self-reported and… -
Did the boss’s ad creative win? Don Draper can’t leave your idea in a cab anymore
14 May 2012 | 12:36 pmIn Mad Men Episode 509, “Dark Shadows,” Don longs to flex his old creative muscles on an account being worked on by the junior phenom, Ginsberg. In the review meetings for the Sno-Cone account, Don slips his “devil” ad concept into the mix. The team agrees that both Don’s idea and Ginsberg’s lighter “snowball in the face” campaign are both strong ideas. It’s agreed that the firm will bring both ideas in to pitch the client. Don’s idea wins because he leaves Ginsberg’s creative in the cab, so they only pitch Don’s idea. -
Unraveling Google’s New Three-Pronged Quality Score Reporting
9 May 2012 | 4:39 pmUnlike the average American 15-year-old, AdWords advertisers now have definitive proof that they can’t all be above average. This comes in the form of Google’s new breakdown format for keyword quality score reporting, by Expected CTR, Ad Creative, and Landing Page Quality. Most advertisers already know that Quality Score (which determines ad rank and eligibility in the auction, and ultimately, heavily influences CPC’s and ROI) derives from CTR and “other relevancy factors.” This new disclosure shows that Google continues to refine the formula to help some… -
Market Quietly: Unsolicited Advice for Research in Motion’s New CMO
9 May 2012 | 9:02 amWelcome, Frank Boulben, Research in Motion’s new CMO. You’re charged with making the Blackberry relevant again. No one expects you to succeed. You’ll be surrounded by the din of detractors, media hacks, and a few people cheering you on. There’s a chance you’ll try to hit a home run when it would be so easy for RIM to get back on track by hitting singles and doubles. My overarching hope is that you’ll see the importance of ignoring the deafening roar on all sides. That you’ll discover the power of marketing quietly. Of protecting your own company from… -
The Healthy Consolidation in the SEM Landscape
4 May 2012 | 9:35 amFor years, SEO companies and “rock stars” have whined that they don’t get the respect they deserve. That’s been unsurprising, given that you trip over seven unethical SEO firms and two “cheesy borderline” SEO firms out of every group of ten. If only 10% of SEO firms are really “agencies” that adhere to some professional standards (including a degree of transparency, contemporary technology & practices, etc.), how can clients figure out what to do and who to hire? It’s been a little better on the PPC side, but here too, it’s…
-
Inside AdWords
-
Announcing the next series of Learn with Google webinars!
16 May 2012 | 12:00 pmEarlier this year, we introduced the Learn with Google webinar program, and we were delighted to see thousands of you show up to learn about a variety of Google advertising products and solutions. Today, we’re happy to announce the continuation of our series with 10 new webinars over the next few months. During each webinar we’ll share tips and how-to’s to help make the web work for your business. Check out our upcoming live webinars below: May 23 at 10am PDT: Getting Started with Google Analytics May 24 at 9am PDT: Building Blocks of Digital Attribution May 31 at 10am PDT: Introduction… -
Younger viewers say hello to online video in 2012
16 May 2012 | 11:11 amAs more consumers reach for their smartphones, tablets and laptops for news and entertainment, there’s a new segment of viewers that watch less than two hours of TV per day - the “light TV viewer.” Around 31% of adults 18 to 49 are light TV viewers. And this segment is growing - households that opted for broadband internet instead of cable TV grew 22.8 percent over the past year, according to the latest Cross Platform Report from Nielsen. To understand how this trend will impact advertisers in 2012, we partnered with Nielsen to conduct six cross-media studies looking at viewership… -
Celebrate the best in digital creativity with Google+ at Internet Week New York and the Webby Awards
15 May 2012 | 12:03 pmOnce again, Internet Week New York is in full force, and we hope that you'll come and join Google+ for some of the festivities as the city’s digital thinkers, from developers to ad agency execs, collaborate on a week of panels and parties: IAB Innovation Days: On Wednesday, May 16 at 1:45pm, Kate Stanford, Group Product Marketing Manager for Social Ads, will be giving a presentation at IAB Innovation Days at Skylight Soho about connecting with customers through a joint strategy across mobile and social platforms. The Webby Awards: On Monday, May 21 at 5:30 PM, celebrate with the whole… -
AdWords Editor users: Migrate to v9.7.1 before June 12, 2012
11 May 2012 | 3:30 pmAs of June 12, 2012, AdWords Editor versions 9.0 and prior will be sunset. After this date, changes made via these versions will not be implemented in your AdWords account. Please download the latest version (9.7.1.) at your earliest convenience, but no later than June 12, 2012.You can upgrade to version 9.7.1 through the auto-update prompt or download the latest version from the AdWords Editor website. After you install the new version, you’ll need to download your account again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the ‘Backup then Upgrade’ option in the automatic… -
Model bid changes at scale with campaign bid simulator
11 May 2012 | 11:57 amWhen we launched bid simulator in 2009, we wanted to make it easy for you to understand the impact of bids on your advertising results. Until now, you’ve been able to access bid simulator at the keyword and ad group level.To allow you to more easily simulate and apply bid changes at scale, we’re pleased to announce the launch of campaign bid simulator.To access campaign bid simulator, go to the Opportunities tab and select “campaign bid simulator” from the left navigation tree. With campaign bid simulator, you can: View bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or…
-
adCenter Blog
-
Insiders Tips for #Social and #SEO Success from #SMX London
16 May 2012 | 10:43 amGot up two mornings in a row at 6AM and it’s taken two strong coffees to appreciate that the sun is shining today. However (and how nerdy have I become!?) the first SMX session ‘Social shares, the new link building’ woke me up and cheered...(read more) -
SMX London 2012: The New Behavioral Ads With Retargeting & Remarketing #SMX
16 May 2012 | 10:28 amWho hasn’t been a victim of retargeting or remarketing ads? Most of you must have had ads following your user journey and it works… As a marketer, it’s always good to learn about new techniques and not miss out on the opportunity to...(read more) -
SMX London 2012: Complying and Coping In the New World of Regulated Global Marketing Environment
15 May 2012 | 11:28 amThe EU’s cookie and tracking legislation is an onerous policy that limits online marketing. US lawmakers are contemplating sweeping changes to intellectual property law that will stifle access and the flow of information. What’s a marketer...(read more) -
How to Seduce Seven Types of Searchers with Great #PPC Ad Copy #SMX
15 May 2012 | 11:24 amWelcome to London: it is pouring with rain and the tube doesn’t work. When the district line does reluctantly grinds to a halt at Fulham Broadway it only takes minutes to reach SMX London which is taking place in the home of Chelsea Football Club...(read more) -
Brooks Running Finds Success with Bing and Yahoo! Search
14 May 2012 | 2:31 pmWant to know if advertising on Bing and Yahoo! Search actually supplies a great ROI for your SMB’s marketing dollars? Don’t just trust us - trust your fellow SMB customers. The proof was in the numbers for Doug Rosenberg, Online Traffic & Loyalty...(read more)
-
PPC Strategies & Pay Per Click News | PPC Hero
-
Google Insights for Search for PPC
14 May 2012 | 12:20 pmGoogle Insights for Search is a popular web trend tool, but it’s application to PPC is often overlooked. This post discusses three ways you can use the tool to increase the efficiency of your PPC accounts. Use Google Insights for problem solving and keyword identification Google insights can be used to help troubleshoot when a past performing keyword starts to do poorly, or starts doing very well. Simply type your query into insights and you’ll see if volume is trending up or down. For “Grocery Coupons” you can see a clear decline in volume. This tells you that you… -
Give Your In-House Team a Little Breather!
14 May 2012 | 8:00 amNot every company needs to employ an agency full-time to manage paid search. Yup, I said it and I work for an agency. Shhhh…no one tell! The truth is that sometimes keeping either a single individual or a small in-house team for PPC management fits certain corporate level business models much better than hiring an entire agency. But what happens when Google releases a new feature, Bing upgrades a targeting capability or the company in question opens up their market to a new product-line? (Remember when Bing changed phrase and broad match keyword behavior back in August of 2011 and many… -
Google Analytics Test Lab – Series Wrap-Up
11 May 2012 | 10:46 amWe hope you’ve found this month’s Google Analytics Test Lab series helpful. By now, it should be obvious that Analytics is a very complex and powerful tool that can be very beneficial for your own accounts if utilized properly. What’s better is the fact that it’s completely free to use! We’ve covered several Analytics topics this week, including: 10 Google Analytics Hot Spots Finding New Test Subjects Using Google Analytics for Lead Generation Google Analytics for Ecommerce Accounts So what do you like most about Google Analytics? We would love to hear about your favorites in the… -
Google Analytics Test Lab: Drive Your E-Commerce PPC Account
10 May 2012 | 12:22 pmWelcome to the third post in our Google Analytics Test Lab blog series. Today I’ll be walking you through using Google Analytics to get the most of you’re your e-commerce PPC account. If you’re running a PPC account for e-commerce, you likely already understand the importance of dynamic reporting capabilities, so I’ll try not to make this article sound like a sponsored plug for Google Analytics. But, as an Account Manager here at Hanapin, I can’t fathom running an e-commerce PPC account without the powerhouse that is Google Analytics. For e-commerce accounts, AdWords data and… -
Using Google Analytics for Lead Generation
10 May 2012 | 11:58 amThe best thing about Analytics is also the worst thing about Analytics. If utilized correctly, Analytics can open up a whole new world of possibilities within your accounts. On the other hand, trying to digest all of the different facets and capabilities can be a difficult and time-consuming process. This is why we decided to host the Analytics Test Lab this month in order to reveal its’ true power. For the purpose of this lab, we will review the basics of goal tracking in Analytics and then discuss some of the methods that I have found to be particularly useful. Goal Conversion…
-
PPC Associates Blog
-
Use your competitor’s “Likes” tab to improve your Facebook campaign
16 May 2012 | 10:55 amOne of the complaints about Facebook since its inception is how dangerously accessible it makes everything – photos, status, updates. On the flip side, of course, knowledge is power. Here’s how to make knowledge about a competing brand’s numbers work for your Facebook advertising campaign. First, look up a competitor’s Facebook page and look for the “Likes” tab. It’s located on the upper portion of the page, below the cover photo. It looks like this: "Like" how much data you're about to get... This tab will show how many lifetime likes your competition has, but… -
The Tools of PPC Ignorance
15 May 2012 | 11:00 am“Learn to evolve and change because what was a month ago no longer is today. Survival is the ability to adapt and change when it’s needed.” EarlGrey, SEO About a month ago, I wrote a post about using Automated AdWords Bidding successfully for the first time. At the time, I believed I was writing a post that showcased how clever I was in figuring out how to use an aspect of AdWords that I had previously dismissed as only useful for folks that don’t know how to professionally manage paid search accounts. However, when I look back at that post, I see something somewhat personal and… -
Ten Impartial Tips on Choosing an Online Marketing Agency (from a Partial Observer)
14 May 2012 | 10:57 amImage credit: hcssdreamjob You’re probably reading this post with a high degree of skepticism, and I don’t blame you; getting advice on choosing an online marketing agency from the head of an online marketing agency is like asking the IRS to file your taxes for you. But wait! Before you discount everything I’m about to say, know that prior to starting my own SEM agency, I spent eight years on the “client side,” and I negotiated with dozens of agencies (and selected several of them). So be skeptical if you must, but I suspect by the end of this article I will have convinced you that… -
Fitbit ROI Challenge recap – Week 3
11 May 2012 | 10:55 amOn the road to victory. Laura Rodnitzky’s daily walk to and from the PPC Associates office in downtown Chicago takes her roughly 11,000 steps, so she figured she was a favorite to win some weekly titles in the Fitbit ROI Challenge. Then she started studying her Active Score. “It made me realize how much of the day I was just sitting around and doing nothing,” said Rodnitzky, who is the company’s director of Change Management and the Chicago office’s general manager. “I wanted to change that.” A little awareness, a LOT of competitiveness, and one… -
A WFH case study: why flexible policies benefit everyone
10 May 2012 | 10:58 amThis is not the desk of a slacker. A recent post by Sean Marshall caught my attention. Regular readers know I’m a huge advocate of the remote workforce and think it brings incredible value to both companies and employees. Every time I see a post or article about remote working, I feel compelled to chime in! Sean nailed it terms of describing the benefits, so I won’t rehash it. Instead I would like to use myself and one of my experiences around working remotely as an example of just how significant this type of arrangement can be. Rewind a few years. I accepted a position with a…
-
Search Marketing Sage
-
Google AdWords’ “Ad Group Ideas” Tab
3 May 2012 | 12:27 pmAs a search engine marketer, whether for PPC or SEO purposes, I always enlist the help of Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to inspire some keyword ideas. While using the Keyword Tool the other day, I noticed that the keywords were organized into categories, thus my introduction to the “Ad group ideas” tab, which is in [...] -
SMX Toronto: Paid Search – Advanced Testing & Reporting
26 Apr 2012 | 2:58 pmIf you missed the Advanced Track this morning at SMX Toronto, here are the highlights from the Paid Search: Advanced Testing and Reporting Panel. Brad Geddes, Founder of Certified Knowledge, and Jeff Ferguson, CEO of Fang Digital Media, lead this panel. This session centered around the actual process of designing, implementing and measuring the results [...] -
SMX Toronto: Link Building and Why You’re Doing It Wrong
25 Apr 2012 | 9:50 pmLink building is still extremely important, but has morphed into an entirely different animal. It is a fundamental building block to SEO, but what else can you do or do differently to be more effective? Dave McAnally of Resolution Media leads the session stating that page authority and link volume don’t predict rank or take [...] -
SMX Toronto: Keyword Research In A [Not Provided] World
25 Apr 2012 | 1:12 pmUgh, Google. Don’t give us something and then take it away. The dreaded [not provided] keywords are plaguing marketers these days as SEO’s are losing valuable keyword traffic and insight into how users are getting to their sites. (For google.ca, however, that valuable data is still provided!) How are we supposed to know what keywords [...] -
SMX Toronto: The Big Google Kitchen Sink
25 Apr 2012 | 10:36 amNow it’s time for the Big Google Kitchen Sink Panel to learn how to better survive Google Algorithm changes. …And we’re back to debating that SEO is not dead, yet. As Google seems to be constantly changing and adjusting the algorithm, it gives us search marketers something to focus on and work to understand. Now [...]
-
Genuine SEO Net
-
Why Article Marketing is a Beginner Friendly Internet Marketing Strategy
15 May 2012 | 9:19 amIf you plan to start making money online, but you don’t have much to get started, using article marketing can help. This is one of the most beginner friendly options because you only need to pay for hosting and a domain name. For less than $20, you can get started earning money online and you will only need to pay a few dollars every month for hosting from there. The only other investment you will need to make is your own time. This strategy takes a little time to build up, but once you do, it can be very powerful. Many large companies and small companies use article marketing to help… -
Reasons To Choose Infographics Over Articles
13 May 2012 | 10:07 pmEveryone’s talking about infographics these days. Should you join the bandwagon and get into infographic design? Should you ditch your usual articles and go the graphic way instead? There is a lot to be said about the usefulness of infographics, but the same can be said about articles. After all, while there is the fact that infographics do catch people’s attention, quality content is still vital to keep people coming back for more. At the end of the day, there will be some situations wherein articles will do a better job, and there will be circumstances wherein infographics will be a… -
Directing Targeted Traffic Towards Your Website
11 May 2012 | 10:26 pmEverybody that has an internet site recognizes that to possess sales you’ll want traffic, although not just any traffic it needs to be specific traffic. What’s Specific traffic? It’s just site visitors aimed at your website that are curious about what your site is about. For instance, people thinking about purchasing jewelry will discover jewelry websites interesting. How do you get specific traffic I hear you request? Listed here are attempted and examined techniques: Forums Sign up for forums that discuss your subject. Respond to questions and participate in the debates… -
3 Easy Ways to Increase Web Traffic With Social Bookmarking
9 May 2012 | 2:35 amSocial bookmarking services are a significantly vital tool to power up your website and reach thousands of visitors. They are an effective tool for promoting your website. Although the initial effect can be impressive, this can deviate away very quickly. Not if you are already prepared for it. If people are desired to come again and again and you met their demands, you will indeed have a constant following. 1. Produce High Quality Content It’s an old strategy and still very applicable. But if your website is a techno centric then you need to have high quality content at your website… -
What To Look For In An SEO Company
6 May 2012 | 8:22 amSEO is one of the most complex services you will ever have to buy, the rules are not clearly defined and you have plenty of people who say there are no rules. However in my opinion there are a few factors that any business should look out for when interviewing for the seo position, whether your employing someone or signing up to an agency, the principles are the same. Keyword research is the process of working out which keywords will deliver the most return on investment. Many business owners think they know the phrases they want to rank for, but often there is more value in going after the…
-
Location3 Media
-
Organizing Teams To Support Effective Content Delivery
16 May 2012 | 10:48 amOver the last several months, I have found the conversation around content to be slowing evolving from “Why is content important to my business?” to “How do we organize around content delivery”? The answer to this question lies in the recognition that content is not simply a one-dimensional SEO tool, but is ultimately how your brand lives within the digital world. How Your Brand Lives Within The Digital World The consumer “path to purchase” has evolved from a linear, brand-directed model, to one where the consumer can fully leverage the transparency of the market, secure… -
Location3 Hosting DMA Webinar on Social, Local and Mobile
15 May 2012 | 10:00 amOver the past year, social, local and mobile digital strategies have begun converging to form an extremely powerful method for increasing findability, generating leads and driving in-store traffic on a localized level. 75% of internet users perform local searches 67% of consumers research online reviews of local businesses before making a purchase 88% of mobile searchers take action within the same day* What do these stats mean for your business? They mean that you can no longer view social media, local search and mobile marketing in isolation. Join CEO Andrew Beckman (@Andrew_Beckman)… -
1Up on A Friday
14 May 2012 | 5:37 pmSki Day has been a long and time-honored tradition at Location3. Colorado’s terrible snow season has devastated us for many reasons, but the closing of A-Basin Ski Resort before our Ski Day was the final indignity. No party bus to the mountains. No corn hole at the tailgate sight. No epic falls in front of our coworkers to live down for another 363 days. We mourned. But! The powers that be didn’t let a bad snow season keep us from an afternoon of company bonding. After a tasty lunch we all headed off to The 1Up, Denver’s premier barcade. Armed with quarters, PBRs and hope,… -
New Google Places Listing Management Interface
9 May 2012 | 2:24 pmYesterday it was reported that Google has started releasing their new Google Places bulk management interface to new and existing users. Google mentions that the purpose of the upgrade is to enhance the management of multiple locations. Example of the Account View Individual Location Edit Functionality We’ve had some time to play around with the new interface and have some initial feedback and thoughts on the implications of these changes. Features we love: The search bar allowing us to find locations instantly The categories are now clearly listed in the help center Addition of… -
The Shift from Relevant to Useful
9 May 2012 | 10:09 amRelevant and useful. These terms are often used interchangeably in search marketing, but they are very different. A great Search Insider post by Gord Hotchkiss outlined this idea within the context of how recent Google updates will affect SEO practices: “First of all, from the perspective of the user, Google’s changes mark an evolution of search beyond a tool used to search for information to one used by us to do the things we want to do. It’s moving from using relevance as the sole measure of success to incorporating usefulness.” Useful is a step beyond relevant. The other weekend I…
-
Search Engine Marketing Blog
-
Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Needs SEO
14 May 2012 | 2:07 amGoogle’s Penguin update may have left you feeling down and out, but now isn’t the time to completely give up on SEO. Penguin Penalties If you’ve been dabbling in black hat tactics, or even gray hat, that is obviously a big problem. But there are many marketers who have been “punished” by the algorithm updates, [...] -
Google’s April Search Quality Highlights: What Stands Out For You?
7 May 2012 | 11:48 pmWhat a month it’s been! Google has released 52 search quality updates over the past month and it’s felt like non-stop changes in search results. While you can check out the entire list here, these are a few that stood out: Smoother ranking changes for fresh results. This update is meant to help users easily [...] -
So Long Facebook FBML
4 May 2012 | 11:55 amAre you ready to finally say goodbye to Facebook FBML tabs? As of June 1, 2012, Facebook FBML apps will no longer work. As Facebook suggests, you can use HTML, JavaScript and CSS if you are building a new application. This is good news for web designers because it is just like building a regular [...] -
SEO Plugins for WordPress
30 Apr 2012 | 2:07 amBefore we take a look at some helpful SEO plugins for WordPress, here are some impressive statistics about the content management system and view the detailed infographic here: - WordPress is responsible for 14.7 percent of the top million websites worldwide representing small, medium and big business. - An average day sees about 500,000 new [...] -
Takeaways From Google’s Penguin Update
27 Apr 2012 | 1:06 amYet another “surprise” for SEOs? Google’s Penguin Update officially launched on April 24 and the overall consensus is that it’s the worst update yet. The official word from Google is that this update is an “important algorithm change targeted at webspam” that is meant to “reward high-quality sites”. Then why exactly are so many people [...]
-
Daily SEO Tip
-
Link Building Using Product Reviews
16 May 2012 | 12:00 pmReviews written by bloggers are a great source of highly relevant, quality links as well as valuable publicity. In many sectors there is a plentiful supply of blogs who are happy to write reviews of fairly low value items (we normally only send out items worth $10-$20) and so building links thorough product reviews is quick and cost effective. This post looks at the process of identifying and selecting bloggers and getting the products review you want. Identifying potential reviewers Before you start recruiting, you should decide on the kind of blogs you want to review your products. You… -
Too Much of a Good Thing – Traffic You Don’t Want
14 May 2012 | 11:55 pmIf you run a website then probably a large portion of your time is spent trying to get people to go there and to this end you are probably trying desperately to collect as many links as possible and to promote in every way you can think of. This results in a kind of scatter gun strategy where you just throw as many links out there as possible and hope that a few stick. Likewise you’ll attract all kinds to your website which will result in your numbers going up. However ‘numbers going up’ isn’t necessarily always a good thing, and it’s not just about the number of… -
Growth of Mobile Search for Classifieds Sector in Mid-Western Europe
14 May 2012 | 12:00 pmIn the first quarter of 2011, Bluerank published a report on Mobile Search for Classifieds Sector in Mid-Western Europe. A year later, we have released the second part of that report, presenting the development of mobile search and the growth of its popularity among users. Our previous predictions concerning the development of mobile search in classifieds sector proved right. Again, we have conducted a research using Google AdWords keyword tool, to determine the level of popularity of mobile search for branded keywords concerning the classifieds sector and compare them with non branded ones. -
Optimizing Images in your Real Estate WordPress Blog
11 May 2012 | 1:57 pmAs realtors, we just love adding images homes to our posts to show off just how great they are right? The idea being that readers will be enticed by what they see as much as by what they read, so much so that they can’t wait to get hold of you and arrange a time to go see it. Right? Right. But, that’s not the only reason we should be adding pretty pictures to our blogs, oh no. Well optimized images can give a huge boost to a page’s search engine ranking, and what’s more they can even drive traffic directly to the page in their own right – through Google Images, for instance. -
If You Stay White Hat Then You Don’t Have to Fear Google’s Updates
8 May 2012 | 11:20 amGoogle went a little SEO update happy this past March, releasing 50 search quality tweaks. Google has also recently come out with some major algorithm updates, including the over optimization penalty and an attack on spammy blog networks. These are all quality updates following in the footsteps of the initial Panda update from last year that targeted article farms and sites that were heavily involved in article spinning. When news of the over optimization penalty broke, a few of my clients wanted to know if their sites were at risk. Every time Google comes out with a major update, most site…
-
Online Marketing Blog
-
Interview: The Future of Cloud Marketing Software with Vocus CMO Jason Jue
16 May 2012 | 6:50 amAt TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. A great example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients. In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see? In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable… -
Channel Your Internal Marketing Warrior: 4 Tips for Strengthening Your Marketing Plan
15 May 2012 | 5:25 amRelease Your Internal Marketing Warrior In March of this year I made a decision: I wanted to get healthier. The problem I have always faced is that I didn’t see the point of exercise, just for the sake of exercise. Treadmills and stationary bicycles never did much for me, but I was looking for a way to regain some focus and start down a healthier path. About a month ago I spoke with my good friend Ali who had recently started a training program to become a yoga instructor. She convinced me to attend a class with her and I even though I’ve done yoga before, this was an entirely new… -
5 Ways to Optimize the Business Value of Attending Conferences
14 May 2012 | 11:37 amAre you optimizing your conference experience? TopRank receives a lot of value from having me speak at conferences but you don’t have to be a speaker to realize a positive return from events. Small, large online or offline, there are numerous ways to optimize and maximize your return on conference involvment both in the short and long term. If your company is considering whether to send you to events because of uncertain return or benefits, show them the following list. In fact, if I were running a conference, I’d make sure these tips are shared with attendees, sponsors and… -
Online Marketing News: Take Action on Social Data, LinkedIn Gets the Scoop, Google Reigns Supreme, Google & Big Data for SEO
11 May 2012 | 5:35 amActionable Social Analytics This recent infographic by awareness takes a dive into social analytics. In an era where virtually every brand is online, it is essential that action is being taken off of the data we are collecting from social networks. This infographic provides not only some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that your company should be tracking, but how to calculate these numbers as well. Examples of the KPI’s your company should be tracking: Brand Awareness & Reputation Marketing Program Effectiveness Lead Generation Effectiveness Use LinkedIn to Get Juicy… -
Holistic Optimization Across the Sales Cycle: Optimize Speaking Events May & June
10 May 2012 | 10:08 amWhen you have a business that relies on attracting new business online the sheer volume of options can be confusing. Should offline advertising efforts transfer to online? Maybe email marketing? What about SEO or the hot topic, social media? So much focus is placed on tactics and channels, that a lot of misplaced digital marketing budget gets wasted or spent inefficiently. To bring some clarity to the myriad online marketing options available, I think it’s worth marketers taking a holistic approach that starts with an essential understanding of goals and customers. Who are your best…
-
Outspoken Media
-
The FruitGuys: A Case Study in Follow-Up
15 May 2012 | 10:27 amWhat if I told you that you could reduce reputation problems, provide great customer service, strengthen your brand, and live according to your values and mission through a single marketing tactic? The answer lies in fruit. Yes, fruit. Around the Outspoken Media office, we’ve been on a big corporate social responsibility kick. It’s one way we convey our values, so when I stumbled on a “fruit delivery” service from The FruitGuys, I had to know more. They provide a corporate delivery solution for local and organic produce. Fantastic! I’m a big environmentalist and… -
Coming soon: Where and When to Find Us
9 May 2012 | 5:21 amWant to see more of Outspoken Media? Here’s where we will be hanging out at in the coming months. We’re always happy to meet new people and catch up with the industry’s finest, so please come and say ‘hi’ if you catch us at one of these events: SMX Advanced – June 5th-6th SMX Advanced is fast approaching! This conference is loaded with some great speakers this year, including keynotes from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of web spam, and Derrick Connell of Bing’s Search Program Management team. Besides contributing to the creation of Bing, we’re pretty… -
Corporate Social Responsibility and Success
8 May 2012 | 4:00 amWhen you created your business plan, you took into account things like a marketing plan, financial data, licenses, employee salaries, insurance, and a social media policy. But did you think about corporate social responsibility (CSR)? If not, it may be time to rethink your business strategy. And if you think you don’t have time to volunteer, contribute to charity, or do something meaningful for your customers because you’re too busy running your business, well, you may want to rethink that attitude because CSR can increase your bottom line. Not only that, it can help you attract… -
Productivity and the Trouble with Assumptions
4 May 2012 | 7:54 am[This is part five in a five-part series charting Outspoken Media's operational development process.] I love “ah-ha!” moments. I’m fortunate enough to work in an industry where they happen all of the time. Kind of like when I find your navigation is coded in non-crawlable JavaScript and not HTML. I love those moments like they’re my own children. Well, that’s extreme, but you get the point. When Outspoken Media started working with Shem Cohen on strategic planning, team building, and organizational development, though, I stumbled upon more “ah-ha!”… -
Corporate Culture for Introverts
3 May 2012 | 5:00 am[This is part four in a five-part series charting Outspoken Media's operational development process.] Let’s just get this out in the open right now—a lot of you think the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test is a bunch of hooey. Come on, admit it. You think it’s like a horoscope, right? You can read into it pretty much whatever you want, and then use it to justify your behavior, right or wrong. I’m sure a lot of people do that. You’re not really responsible for your behavior if it’s attributable to your predetermined personality. That’s just you, and…
-
aimClear® Blog
-
Thanks GM, That Leaves More Facebook Ads Impressions For Me
16 May 2012 | 8:39 amGeneral Motors, in a widely reported Facebook-IPO-week #Fail bail, has quit their social media agency of record and abandoned Facebook Ads. We understand the former, but not the latter. The most common reason for Facebook Ads failure, or in any channel for that matter, is a serious misunderstanding of the channel. Hey there Mr. and Ms. online marketer. What would YOU do with about 24 billion paid Facebook Ads impressions, served to the largest sampling of humans on earth with the end goal of selling GM cars? Would you target social ads broadly, run promotions, attempt to drive users to… -
Sanibel Causeway From Captiva: aimClear Just For Fun Friday!
11 May 2012 | 1:30 pmToday we’re kicking off a new Friday afternoon feature, “Just For Fun Friday!” Being aimClear, we’re fortunate to have a ton of opportunities to experience life to it’s fullest. From Sydney to San Diego, New York to San Francisco, Toronto to Tampa, our team seems to be everywhere these days. Most weeks we’ll publish a few off-the-beaten-path pictures highlighting some tasty experience that lit up one of our iPhones, pocket cams’ or screen captures. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that delight me the most . The picture at the top of this… -
Email Marketing Hall Of Shame: 3 Classic #Fails To Avoid
8 May 2012 | 10:48 amEmail marketing is easy, right? It seems so simple. Yet some respected companies still make classic email marketing mistakes. Read on for an online marketing rant down memory lane. Before there were AdWords, Facebook or LinkedIn targeting, there was venerable email marketing. In this current (tricked out) demographic targeting era, where we regularly model and market to complex “Personas” and their sub- “Personalities,” it’s important to take a step back and remember the basics. Profile your customers by leveraging focused on-hand data. Tread softly. Treat… -
Community Manager Confessions: Why I’m Terrified Of Plasma Screen TVs (Or, How High-5s Saved My Sanity)
27 Apr 2012 | 11:58 amGather round, boys and girls, it’s time for another installment of Community Manager Confessions. If you’re unfamiliar with this social-media-secret-spilling series, it’s because we just created it today. Before we begin, let’s take a moment to exchange a high five with one another. Yes, high fives. Remember those? You know, you put your hand up – yep, yes, just like that, right – very good, and then I swoop in and slap your palm with my palm, but not too hard! Just a nice, even “Yeah, buddy!” high five to show you’re recognized, and… -
Mega CTR-Tastic Sponsored Stories, Live In A Facebook News Feed Near You!
26 Apr 2012 | 5:07 pmBy now, most Facebook users probably have not have noticed Page Post Like Sponsored Stories, FB’s paid organic amplification product, creeping into their news feeds. Facebook marketers, on the other hand, are jumping up and down for joy. CTRs (click through ratios) for Page Post Like stories are through the roof and, with clever second degree of separation targeting, there is obviously hay to be made. Sure, we’ve heard this was coming for months. In fact there has been reporting on the subject since last December. Still, not everyone has seen news feed stories. Now the feature…
-
Branded3
-
Zend Framework, Magento and WordPress – sitting in a tree…
16 May 2012 | 9:44 amOff the back of a recent site launch, I wanted to talk about how we combine some of the industry standard, award-winning software that we use – and some of the issues we face at a technical level. We’re constantly finding new and innovative ways of tackling issues raised by clients, but it’s important to remember that there’s no point contstantly re-inventing the wheel, when combining the powers of such software can achieve so much. This platform involved the integration of two great offerings. A stable blogging platform, WordPress, and a powerful ecommerce platform… -
Penguin Update Renders SEOmoz & Majestic Link Data Unreliable For Link Cleanup
14 May 2012 | 7:52 amFollowing on from our blog post recently about cleaning up unnatural links we’ve been doing some research to understand which tools are best to use for finding bad links to your site. The primary tools that most of us know and love for link analysis are Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz and Majestic SEO but we have recently found that these tools (even if their results are merged together) are not able to find the same level of unnatural links that Google is aware of. The problem with OSE and Majestic is that they crawl the web starting with the highest authority sites and build an index… -
The EU e-Privacy Directive Compliance
14 May 2012 | 5:07 amYou’ve probably all heard of the ‘EU Cookie Law’ by now, but you might not know what it actually specifies and what’s going to happen when it comes into place on 26th May 2012. Named the ‘EU e-Privacy Directive Compliance’ (it doesn’t solely apply to cookies); the law actually came into play last May, but the Information Commissioner’s Office has given web masters 12 months to prepare for the enforcement of the law this year. The law states that cookies or similar devices must not be used unless the user of the technology is provided with “clear and comprehensive information… -
The New-Look Facebook for Brands
11 May 2012 | 4:29 amWhat does the new Facebook mean for brands and how can the Timeline be best utilised in the online conversation? Facebook’s now obligatory changes to its layout have meant that brands have had to alter their marketing approach to the world’s biggest social media network to maintain and attract the attention of their existing and prospective audiences. The introduction of the Timeline means that ‘brand stories’ are the main focus of the new-look Facebook – the whole layout means that profiles can now be much more engaging and, indeed, aesthetically pleasing, but that is only true for… -
Cleaning your links: A step-by-step guide
3 May 2012 | 5:08 amWhilst I’ve only been working ‘properly’ in the SEO field at Branded3 for eight months or so, it’s clear from our very own Patrick Altoft that the last few months have caused the biggest upheaval in the search world for a long time. “…SEO has never been harder to do than it is right now.” There’s much talk about the various Google wildlife that’s currently been unleashed on the WWW but this isn’t going to be another post about Penguins and Pandas, or how certain sites are more at risk of penalty, how bad the SERPs are or how Google is destroying small businesses. There are…
-
Conversation Marketing from Portent, Inc: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon
-
Wanted: Enterprise Search Gods
15 May 2012 | 12:30 pmLately, I’ve been feeling like a grade schooler punished along with the rest of the class for one student’s bad behavior. With Google’s Pandas, Penguins and other pandemonium-producing updates yet to come, we’re all Bart Simpson being forced to write on the SEO chalkboard, “I will not outsource link building to third-world countries that spam blogs.” Sheesh! It’s times like that that my mind turns to flights of fancy… If I could make Google do whatever I wanted… Well, I can and so can you — just not for the whole Web. We can control… -
Google Penguin for non-SEOs
14 May 2012 | 11:43 pmThey were cute until Google got to 'em If I say ‘Google Penguin’ to an SEO pro, they shudder. In the SEO world, Google’s Penguin update is the nastiest, scariest update since, I dunno, Florida? Here’s an explainer for all the marketers who are wondering what the hell just happened to their traffic: What’s an update? The engineers at Google constantly tune their search software to provide (hopefully) more accurate results. Most of these tune-ups are pretty small, and go unnoticed by anyone except us hardcore search geeks. They’re like thunderstorms: You… -
SEO & UX – Working together to make your site better
10 May 2012 | 2:57 pmA few years ago I stepped into a role as an information architect and user experience designer at a Portland ad agency. Coming from a background in search marketing, this was quite a bit of a change for me. The first thing I noticed was that SEO & UX should really be a more integrated system in the designing of a site. The second thing I noticed was that SEO really gets a bad rap from the UX and design community. This was really an invaluable experience for me, as I was able to look at both my former job and my current job in a different light. I got to be removed from my instincts as an… -
How to hire an SEO company, 2012 edition
9 May 2012 | 6:34 pmI’ve written other posts about hiring SEO firms: How to hire good ones. How to hire bad ones. But an update’s in order: Questionnaire for an SEO agency Start each agency you interview with 10 points. Add or subtract as indicated. Ask yourself: How did this firm get in touch with you? They cold-called or e-mailed you. No. -1 They answered your ad. Sorry, but good SEOs don’t spend their days scouring the internet want ads. Ads are good for comic relief, not smart hiring. -5 You found them. Good. That’s a good start. +1 Can you give me some references? No. Well, duh. -
How to Use Hootsuite and Twitter Lists to Engage Your Audience
8 May 2012 | 11:41 amI remember when I got my first Twitter follower. I was a bright-eyed web surfer with a bushy tail (since birth). @getfree_ebooks3 followed me, and our relationship blossomed. She was beautiful. I would tell her about what I was eating for lunch and other important Twitter issues, and she would suggest nice pieces of malware for my computer to download. I eventually discovered that @getfree_ebooks3 was a spam bot. It was heartbreaking. I realized the truth about Twitter. At that moment, I realized that the best way to create quality relationships on Twitter is to seek out the people in your…
-
HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
-
7 Enlightening Infographics About Email Deliverability
16 May 2012 | 10:55 amI've said it before, and I'll say it again. It doesn't matter how great your email marketing is if nobody can see it. And getting hundreds of thousands of eyes on your amazing email marketing campaigns begins with email deliverability. There's actually quite a lot to take into account to ensure your emails actually get delivered to a recipient's inbox. Your list has to be healthy (if you're curious what makes up a healthy email list, take this 5-question test we developed); you need to develop and maintain a high Sender Score; you need to segment your email list like a pro; and the list goes… -
20 Clues Your Marketing Stinks, Straight From the Horse's Mouth
16 May 2012 | 8:00 amIf there's one thing that makes our toes tingle (other than inbound marketing, of course), it's seeing examples of marketing done right. Great marketing makes us excited to be working in a trailblazing industry where other marketers are doing seriously innovative things to make marketing people actually like. But to get so excited about awesome marketing means there's another end of the spectrum. A dark side where email spammers, poor segmenters, and keyword stuffers live trying to pass off their activities as marketing. Those guys give legitimate marketers a bad name, and the worst part of… -
Twitter Launches Weekly Email Digest to Aid Content Discovery
15 May 2012 | 3:30 pmLooks like Twitter is putting its January acquisition of social news startup Summify to good use! Yesterday, the official Twitter blog announced that it will start sending users a weekly email digest featuring relevant tweets and stories shared by the people they're connected with on Twitter. This just several days after news of Twitter's "acqui-hire" of personalized email marketing service RestEngine. Similar to the updated design of the Twitter Discover tab we covered earlier this month, the summary highlights which of the users you're connected to on Twitter shared the featured stories and… -
10 Simply Awesome Examples of Email Marketing
15 May 2012 | 10:48 amAs the Boston Globe highlighted eloquently on our behalf to announce today's launch of HubSpot's new email tools, email marketing is not dead! But over the years, some less than savory email marketing behaviors by brands -- whether they knew better or not -- have soured many recipients to the email messages filling up their inboxes. On the other hand, it has also made consumers jump for joy when they actually do get an email that is helpful, interesting, or innovative. And that's the kind of email marketing we like to celebrate! We've written about fantastic ecommerce retargeting campaigns,… -
Why List Segmentation Matters in Email Marketing
15 May 2012 | 7:50 amBy now, most marketers understand the importance of email to their overall marketing strategy and recognize that it's not dying in the wake of other emerging marketing tactics like social media. But while most marketers realize that email is here to stay, unfortunately, that doesn't exactly mean certain email marketing best practices have caught on. Segmentation is one such best practices. Segmenting your communications can improve your email marketing campaigns by leaps and bounds (read on -- we have the data to prove it!). Luckily, marketers are at least starting to realize the importance…
-
Local SEO Guide
-
So What If Google Previews Count As Active Pages In Google Analytics Real-Time?
16 May 2012 | 12:03 pmA client pointed out interesting behavior in their Google Analytics Real-Time report – when a user mouses over previews of your site’s URL in the SERP, it is reported in the Top Active Pages report. This may not be a fully-rolled out feature as I cannot replicate it on other accounts I have access to. Here’s how it gets triggered: 1. Open up the Real-Time report in GA 2. Search Google for your site using a site: query (e.g. site:domain.com/directory) – it seems to work only if you search for a specific directory v. the entire domain 3. Hover your mouse over the preview… -
Linkbuilding Ain’t Marketing
14 May 2012 | 10:57 amWell at least a lot of the linkbuilding I see going on isn’t. But it can be. Which is why I wrote 5 Local Linkbuilding Ideas for the Post-Penguin/Panda Era And I wanted an excuse to put up ridiculous dog pics on SearchEngineLand. -
Going Negative on Negative SEO
11 May 2012 | 11:40 amAwesome discussion on Aaron Wall’s post, Yes, Negative SEO Techniques Do Work on Google, between Aaron, Danny Sullivan and a bunch of experienced SEOs who are not crazy about the collateral damage of the Penguin Update. The parts about small businesses and SEO ring particularly true, from both sides of the debate: AndrewL: there’s never any mention of small to medium businesses and other vulnerable sites in regards to negative SEO. There’s a bizarre assumption that all sites are “pundit” sites and all we have to do is keep blogging away writing… -
Why Google+ Still Has A Ways To Go…
10 May 2012 | 8:27 pm -
Bing Really Gets Social…
10 May 2012 | 6:35 pmor at least that’s what the press release says…
-
Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik
-
Excellent Analytics Tips #20: Measuring Digital "Brand Strength"
14 May 2012 | 5:05 amA lot of digital analytics focuses on direct response (conversions, leads, etc.). But there is an additional valuable, and sexy, focus of our marketing we don't give enough analytical love: Branding! It is sad that we spend so little time on brand analysis, primarily because 1. there is such little accountability to brand marketing and 2. it is such a strategic part of any business. So let's fix that problem in this blog post. Let's become BFFs with a lovely hidden gem that helps you leverage one of the largest source of data on the planet to understand the strength of your… -
You Are What You Measure, So Choose Your KPIs (Incentives) Wisely!
23 Apr 2012 | 4:54 amYes, data is important. Helps make marketing better. Makes for smart organizations. Blah, blah, blah. You know the drill: Measure. Find insights. Take action. (Or die trying.) Ascend to corporate heaven. While there is a great deal of appreciation for the power of metrics/data, I've come to realize that Sr. Leaders don't quite appreciate the deep, and often corrosive, consequences of choosing metric x over metric y as a key performance indicator (KPI). [Sidebar] A key performance indicator is a metric that helps you understand actual performance against preset business objectives. -
Multi-Channel Attribution: Definitions, Models and a Reality Check
2 Apr 2012 | 4:47 amA wise person said: "To guarantee success, spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it." I believe deeply in that quote. In my life I spend an extraordinary amount of time understanding the problem and attempting to define it clearly. As if by magic, I find that it is then much easier to find the optimal solution (or realize none exists!). Multi-Channel Attribution is a red hot topic in our industry, and yet it is so poorly understood. I'm convinced that the resulting problems (confusion, FUD, angst, daily prayers, and wasted budget) are due to the… -
A Big Data Imperative: Driving Big Action
12 Mar 2012 | 4:15 amIs there anything in the analytics space that is so full of promise and hype and sexiness and possible awesomeness than "big data?" I don't think so. So what is big data really? No one quite knows. As I interpret it, big data is the collection of massive databases of structured and unstructured data. The data sources include traditional (now considered puny) sources like corporate ERP/CRM systems and non-traditional (massive) sources like every technical ping from every human or mechanical sensor, all web behavior by everyone across the entire Internet, increasingly digital… -
The Biggest Mistake Web Analysts Make… And How To Avoid It!
20 Feb 2012 | 4:19 amThe single biggest mistake web analysts make is working without purpose. We work very hard. We torture SiteCatalyst. We send out a lot of data. Then we resend it again and again. And yet our work results in very little impact on the business in terms of action taken by company leaders. Why this sad state? Almost always we dive into the ocean of data first. Sadder still, we don't ask questions later. We never ask questions. No questions. No tie to what's important. No impact from the data. Result? Our work lacks purpose. It is that simple. My normal recommendation to address this…
-
Posts from the Econsultancy blog
-
Making tag management work for you: new report & infographic
16 May 2012 | 10:34 amThe digital world is complicated and website tags sit at the heart of online businesses and marketing. In fact, effectively managing website tags, or tracking pixels, is fundamental to digital marketing. In the ROI of Tag Management, a new report released today in partnership with Tealium, we explore the role, challenges and opportunities for technology in handling vendor website tags.The tracking pixel enables communication between vendors and websites and is key to most digital marketing technologies. Site analytics, optimization and personalization all depend on them, and while these… -
More than a third of Homebase customers research online before going in-store
16 May 2012 | 7:01 amMore than a third of Homebase customers research online before going to a bricks-and-mortar store, according to the retailer’s head of multichannel. During a speech at the E-Commerce Futures Conference this morning, Andy McWilliams said it highlights the need for a joined up approach in-store and online. Even if you think you’re a multichannel retailer, online and offline often act almost independently. You get different offers online vs. offline. They have to be the same, and communication has to be the same. One of Homebase’s key multichannel tools is reserve and… -
How to be a formidable content curator: a 17-step guide
16 May 2012 | 6:25 amOver the past few years I must have heard the phrase ‘everyone is a publisher nowadays’ a thousand times or more. It’s largely accurate, due to the rise of social media, but I think we are mainly ‘curators’, as opposed to ‘publishers’. Content curation is something that many of us will be familiar with, even if we don’t think of ourselves as curators. We instinctively find and share interesting content with our personal and professional networks. We follow others who share the kind of links that engage and entertain. Yesterday the clearly… -
Online shoe fitting app reduces returns by 23%
16 May 2012 | 6:14 amAn app which allows customers to find more accurate information about the shoe size they need to order has managed to reduce fit-related returns rates by 23% US retailer Running Warehouse has been using the Shoefitr app on its product pages since 2010, and the tool has been very popular with consumers. By reducing fit-related returns, the app has enabled Running Warehouse to increase its profit margins by 2.5%. Previously, around 65% of the retailer returns were due to size related issues, but now 20% of orders come in from customers that have used the app. … -
18m UK consumers have used social media for customer service
16 May 2012 | 5:17 amMore than a third of UK consumers (36%) have engaged with brands through social media, according to a survey from Fishburn Hedges. This has doubled from 19% since August 2011 and equates to around 18m people. The increased interaction appears to be driven by the widespread belief among respondents (40%) that social media improves customer service, compared to only 7% who feared it would harm service. In fact 68% of those who have engaged with brands through social media believe that it “allowed them to find their voice.”More than two-thirds (65%) also believe that it is a better…
-
Fathom
-
B2B Manufacturing and Social Media: How To Begin
16 May 2012 | 6:00 amWhile many manufacturing businesses are using social media, many don’t know why they have a Facebook page/Twitter handle or why they are trying to get more followers. Others are contemplating social media and don’t know where to start. Regardless of where your business falls, you should step back and think strategy A strategic approach to social media first involves knowing why you want to be involved and your goals for participation. Then, you need to determine who you want to connect with, where they gather and what topics are important to them. Knowing the “who,” “where”… -
Get Real Problem-Solvers for Real Results from Your Big Data
15 May 2012 | 11:23 amIt can be very easy for a user to get lost in all the “Big Data” hype, but several things need to be in place to make sure your company finds the gold that lies within large data sets. It should be stated that you could have all the newest tools and experience in the world, but without the proper problem-solvers, your marketing intelligence could be misinterpreted. Big data for marketing is best applied with a combination of the latest software and skilled talent. By taking insights gained from a Big-Data analytics platform, you can make smart marketing adjustments grounded in science. -
AdAge 25 Largest U.S. Search-Marketing Agencies (2012)
11 May 2012 | 12:45 pmFathom is living large … again. For the 6th year in a row, the company has been named to the Advertising Age list of the 25 largest U.S. search-marketing agencies. Ranked by 2011 U.S. revenue, Fathom ended up at #21. On behalf of the entire company, I’d like to thank the many clients of Fathom throughout the years for making both this milestone and my career (along with the careers of my colleagues) possible. I’d also like to thank AdAge for this public recognition of our growth and overall success. Though many more results are still to be delivered for current and future… -
The “Other” Moneyball: Baseball Business Analytics
11 May 2012 | 8:23 amWith the Major League Baseball season only a month old, spring fever has hit the Fathom team as we reminisce about my favorite sport: Baseball. Incomparable to any other sport, statistics rule the game of baseball. Virtually every conversation about the game mentions a player’s batting average, home-run total, ERA (for pitchers) or one of a thousand other measured stats from the national pastime. After the release of the best-selling book and award-winning movie Moneyball, there is more attention than ever on statistics in baseball. Though with less fanfare than the player side of the… -
“Big Data” Means Knowing Where to Find the Gold
10 May 2012 | 1:59 pmBack during the American Gold Rush, most of the people who went out for gold were enthusiastic amateurs who had to search for it the hard way – they’d sit by a stream where gold had already been found, and run water through a shallow pan, hoping for paydirt. Today, a lot of people using digital marketing – be it email, SEO, PPC or some other medium – are functioning about the same way those miners did; that is, hit and miss and hope for the best. They’re missing out on leads and sales because they don’t have a clear idea of when, where or how to direct their efforts. That’s…
-
hobo
-
Google Pagerank Update MAY 2012
3 May 2012 | 7:08 amGraphic by Elliance – First sourced at Search Engine Land Is anyone else seeing a Google Toolbar Pagerank update? I have TPR on pages from @ April 26 2012. This coincides with the latest Google PANDA and Google PENGUIN update in April 2012. I am definitely seeing toolbar pr update on internal pages. If you are interested in Google Pagerank….. looks [...] Check out - Google Pagerank Update MAY 2012 http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ -
TIP – How To Check For A Negative SEO Attack?
1 May 2012 | 10:00 pmQuick Negative SEO alert tip…… This won’t work for everybody but it worked for me (or rather, I happened across this simple method). But if you have a blog yourself, this might help you. It appears somebody is doing some negative seo ‘attack’ on the Hobo site as of recently…. I wouldn’t have known this [...] Check out - TIP – How To Check For A Negative SEO Attack? http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ -
UPDATED – Hobo SEO Wp Bot Tracker Plugin for WordPress
29 Apr 2012 | 10:14 pmUPDATED APRIL 2012 NOW TRACKS GOOGLE, BING, KEYWORDS, REFERRERS & 404 Pages. Marty just updated our simple WordPress plugin we made a few years ago – which you can install on self-hosted WordPress blogs. It nows also tracks the crawling activity of BingBot, as well as GoogleBot, and it will also tell you which keywords were used to find your site. We tested it [...] Check out - UPDATED – Hobo SEO Wp Bot Tracker Plugin for WordPress http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ -
Best SEO Company Results in Google UK
29 Apr 2012 | 10:13 pmFact 1. The UK is now in recession. You may be thinking of employing a seo company to help you optimise your site. You might even think about searching Google for “best seo company” (if you don’t know any better)….. Fact 2 – Google just applied the Penguin update to its natural listings. There are [...] Check out - Best SEO Company Results in Google UK http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ -
Google Drive or Dropbox – Which Cloud Storage Is Best For Me?
29 Apr 2012 | 10:09 pm[Google Drive is not available in the UK at the moment. But - it's 'coming'.] Where will you choose to store your life in the cloud? Dropbox (aff) or Google Drive? NOTE – The following chart says Dropbox had 2 GB free storage as it did – but Dropbox now offers 5GB of free space [...] Check out - Google Drive or Dropbox – Which Cloud Storage Is Best For Me? http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/
-
ion interactive blog
-
5 Types of Headlines to Test on Your Landing Page
14 May 2012 | 9:45 pmYour headline just may be the single most important element on your landing page. Time and time again we’ve seen the headline prove to have a huge impact on conversions. Headline writing, however, is an art and one that takes time, practice & patience. To help inspire your headline testing, we’ve outlined 5 types of headlines to test on your landing pages. 1. Benefit-driven One of the first techniques you should explore is transforming your major benefit into a headline. To write a successful benefit headline, you must know your target audience well, so you can… -
"I'm a Post-Click Marketing Professional."
9 May 2012 | 12:08 pmEveryone knows the the standard “meet and greet” conversation format. This can happen virtually anywhere, but the usual locations are at a bar, party, or some other form of social gathering. The conversation generally is a variation of your given birth name, where you live now, with a quick reference of “But I’m originally from…,” and then the age old question, “What do you do?” This is the defining moment of the conversation, the portion that you must answer with complete confidence and a subdued brilliance. In this split second… -
Selling Landing Pages to the C-Suite
9 May 2012 | 10:01 amSelling to the C-Suite takes more than just an exciting pitch. You have to ready to explain how a landing page program can benefit the whole company. Luckily, this is a pretty easier answer, and it’s been well documented that landing pages can help increase online marketing ROI and improve lead generation efforts. The key to selling the idea to the C-Suite however is to make it very clear how landing pages will be able to do this for your particular company. Here are a few tips on how you can make a strong case for landing pages: 1. Align With Company Goals Step back and analyze current… -
How to Turn Display Ad Clicks into Conversions
7 May 2012 | 9:30 amI recently came across an article from AdAge that suggests that marketers should move away from holding banner ads accountable for conversions and instead focus on branding metrics. The basis for this comes from a study that found clicks aren’t an important metric for measuring the success of a banner ad. The study was run on campaigns from 18 advertisers, and found almost no correlation between a click on a banner ad and a conversion. I, respectfully, disagree. Display ads can drive conversions and the correlation between a click on an ad and a conversion can be… -
4 Ways to Increase Conversions
4 May 2012 | 9:00 amYou only have a few seconds to convince your visitor to stay on your landing page. These seconds are critical and your landing page needs to do everything it can to make a great first impression. If you are looking to increase your lead generation efforts through conversion optimization techniques, check your pages for these must-have elements that make a great first impression. 4 Ways to Get More Conversions 1. A strong call-to-action If you don’t ask for it, you probably won’t get it. When your landing page visitors get to your page they want to first know that they are in the right…
-
MediaPost | Search Insider
-
If Don Draper Worked In Search Marketing
16 May 2012 | 7:17 amI'm sure you've all watched "Mad Men" and wondered what it would be like if Don Draper worked in today's advertising industry. But what if the greatest fictional ad creative of all time found himself in SEM? -
How Advanced SEMs Roll: Search Query Mining
14 May 2012 | 10:14 amBig data is everywhere. It's become a fashionable topic du jour, and in an industry like search engine marketing, where data is everything, that trend holds especially true. One of my favorite quotes on the importance of data to the future of business is from Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, "Datarati are companies that have the edge in consumer data insight... Data is ubiquitous and cheap, analytical ability is scarce... The sexiest job in the next ten years will be statistician." -
Believing Is Seeing
10 May 2012 | 10:06 amIn his book "The Believing Brain," Michael Shermer spends several hundred pages exploring just how powerful beliefs are in forming our view of the world. Beliefs impact not just what we think, but they literally filter what we see and do. And, once in place, beliefs tend to be stubbornly unshakeable. We will go to great extents to defend our beliefs with rationalizations that are often totally or partially fabricated. As Shermer says, "Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow." -
Dear SEOs: Google Owes You Nothing
8 May 2012 | 3:14 pmI have to admit it - yesterday's column by Ryan DeShazer got my dander up a little bit. Just the headline -- "Doesn't Google Owe SEOs Something?" -- caught me and wouldn't let go. So, I decided I'd present the other side of this discussion today on why Google does not owe anything to SEOs. -
Doesn't Google Owe SEOs Something?
7 May 2012 | 2:48 pm"It's one of the most important rules of search engine optimization. Don't depend solely on SEO. Especially don't depend solely on Google, the largest of the SEO sources. I'm always surprised when people fail to learn this lesson." That's how Danny Sullivan began his column, "Penguin's Reminder: Google Doesn't Owe You A Living, So Don't Depend On It." In that piece, Sullivan draws parallels between Google's latest algorithm update, codenamed Penguin, and algorithm changes from the past. He references the online virulence that often occurs in the wake of such changes. Penguin has been no…
-
Marketing Technology Blog
-
Infographic: Evolution of Marketing Automation
16 May 2012 | 6:49 amThis year there’s been a virtual explosion in the marketing automation industry. Where marketing automation systems used to only be affordable to large enterprise, required many resources to implement and manage, and were complex to use… today’s marketing automation systems are simple, elegant, and optimized for companies both large and small. Our Marketing Automation sponsors at Right On Interactive have been helping us understand the industry, the benefits and the incredible changes that are occurring. Ifbyphone is a leader in voice-based marketing automation. Systems like… -
Michael Brito of Edelman Digital on MTB Radio
15 May 2012 | 9:15 pmWe are happy to announce that we will be having Michael Brito of Edelman Digital on the Marketing Tech Blog Radio Show this Friday, May 18, at 3 p.m. EST. On the show, we will be discussing the differences between social brand and social business, the value of social business, and the differences and similarities between advocates and influencers. Michael works for Edelman Digital as the Senior Vice President of Social Business Planning. Basically, he helps clients transform their organizations to be more open, collaborative and socially proficient; with the end result of creating shared… -
MTB Save 10% on Blog World New York 2012
15 May 2012 | 7:42 pmBlogWorld offers Bloggers, Podcasters, Internet Radio and TV Broadcasters, Businesses & Entrepreneurs more New Media Education, Networking and Business Opportunities in one place than any other single event. With 200+ Speakers, 3 Days of Education and a Tradeshow Exploding with New Media Innovations, this is one of my favorite conferences in the industry. Save an additional 10% NOW on your Early Bird Blog World New York 2012 registration with the code “BWAPVIP10“! Register now to save! This offer expires on 5/20/2012. Content Creation: Learn how to create Blogs, Podcasts and… -
Eyequant: Heatmapping on the Fly
15 May 2012 | 3:24 pmEyeQuant is a predictive eye-tracking model that specifically looks at what users see on a page within the first 3-5 seconds. The idea is simple: within 5 seconds a user should be able to see who you are, what your value proposition is, and what to do next. EyeQuant allows for optimizing the design of a page to ensure this is the case. Here are the free results of our EyeQuant demo… I’m quite happy with where the attention is being placed on our home page! What separates EyeQuant from other services is the fact that it just takes a few minutes to get the results. The results also… -
18 Must-Know Inbound Marketing Experts
14 May 2012 | 7:55 pmColleague Dave Morse of Delta Faucet passed on a congratulations to me today for making a list of 18 Must-Know Inbound Marketing Experts in Marketo’s Whitepaper: Amplify Your Impact: How to Multiply the Effects of Your Inbound Marketing Program. Wow – that’s quite an honor… especially having my name alongside this list of amazingly talented marketers: Michael Brito – Follow @Britopian Paul Gillin – Follow @pgillin Adam Metz – Follow @theMetz Ann Handley – Follow @MarketingProfs C.C. Chapman – Follow @cc_chapman Chris Brogan – Follow…
-
Toronto SEO Services - Local Search Marketing
-
Search Engines Promoting Their Own Products
1 May 2012 | 6:22 amThere is a set of interesting quizes being published over at SEObook.com – the one below is very telling. I personally think it is OK if a company pushes its own products but Google and other search engines built their popularity on the basis of offering free and fair search results. Many average Joes’s (and Jane’s) don’t understand what is paid and what is organic, they just assume they are getting the best results on the first page…. -
More Bad Overseas Content
17 Apr 2012 | 9:18 amI have written before about the millions of pages of spun content that has infected the web and is indexed and ranked by Google. Just yesterday I received a well written email detailing how this company will help me advertise on quality content blogs. I asked for a sample and this is the quality! -
Is Google + Just Smoke and Mirrors
1 Apr 2012 | 7:52 amThere have been many reports that Google Plus is not doing as well as they say. Here is a post by the new CEO of Reddit.com -
Digital Marketing is All About Seeing into the Future
1 Mar 2012 | 5:05 amLove this video! -
Article Spinning at its Worst
1 Feb 2012 | 5:26 amA favorite of pretend SEO companies is to spin articles using software and then publishing them as unique. Here is a shinning example (http://www.masquerademasksformen.com/2012/01/16/texas-automobile-recyclers-offer-opportunity-to-save-big-on-auto-repairs/) With countless companies in the usa taking visits in cash flow, there may be one that will be in fact booming and supporting individuals save money concurrently. The auto these recycling marketplace isn’t getting smaller, its expanding and there are many main reasons driving this increase in business. A vey important just one requires…
-
Paul Roekle
-
Jacinto’s Info On Cheap Car Insurance
15 May 2012 | 1:09 pmJacinto’s Info On Cheap Car Insurance Exactly like it seems complete will handle several situations, including fireplace, theft, animal destruction, temperature injury including wind or hail damage. This type of protection is usually suggested and needed for completely new vehicles, hired vehicles, or when your car still features a quality. You’ll still need to pay your deductible prior to the claim is covered by the insurance company. For older vehicles that are not worth much anymore, that you own outright, choose a minimum amount or decrease this protection entirely. Some of… -
Dede’s Tips To Cheaper Car Insurance
14 May 2012 | 4:15 pmDede’s Tips To Cheaper Car Insurance Some states do necessary uninsured motorist coverage, while many don’t. Some plans don’t distinguish between uninsured drivers who’ve no protection at all and underinsured individuals who may well not have sufficient protection. If this insurance is a solution, where you live could help decide if you need this insurance or not. Auto insurance for youngsters can be extremely high priced, usually making many parents without any option but to avoid investing in a car because of their kid.. If your child will soon be driving, it’s… -
“Simple Guide To Cheaper Car Insurance “
11 Mar 2012 | 6:08 am“Simple Guide To Cheaper Car Insurance “ Many people manage to place their cheap auto insurance for granted. Therefore they do not discover the amount extra they are paying for it every month. In fact taking a great critical look at your car insurance quality will reveal that you will be having to pay more than what you should thus it is a wise decision to try to decrease it a bit. The idea isn’t really hard to acquire a lower price on your cheap car insurance in texas, given that there are many insurance firms out there today therefore a lot competitors current amidst these. -
Internet Marketing – How You Can Recycle Internet Marketing Ideas
10 Mar 2012 | 6:38 pmInternet Marketing – How You Can Recycle Internet Marketing Ideas Watch should have a new ymca upland web site. It is the cheapest form of advertising available and something of the handful of enjoying areas that permits you to seem as large as somebody along with 1000s of dollars regarding start-up money. Developing a well-made upland ymca site is not as hard as it might seem to be. With no cost templates as well as easy-to-use packages like Wp, when you can fastened a picture to a e-mail you can create an online site! The first task toward creating a website for the small business is… -
Looking For a Money Making Idea Online? – A method to Make Money With No Money
8 Mar 2012 | 3:04 amLooking For a Money Making Idea Online? – A method to Make Money With No Money As is the case with many companies, you are most likely looking for ways to boost individuals to your site and build customer commitment, which usually finally ends in a lot more income. Site content. Will not know this as suggestion a good try things out, since it is any tried-and-true technique of that to create your tanzanite loose stones organization. Each and every the tanzanite rings organization require articles? The reply is which content is your gas in which powers your website. No person likes to…
-
Amplify Interactive
-
Ryan’s PPC Playlist: Staying Creative In Paid Search Edition
15 May 2012 | 12:49 pmPaid search has constantly evolving features and changes in the space combined with shifting needs of clients and business. Effective PPC managers are flexible and creative to adapt to this landscape. Take the Bear Grylls approach to PPC management and ensure your campaigns don’t die a slow death in the internet wilderness with this edition of the playlist. Amplified Gold Posts How to Steal Killer Sales Copy Straight from Your Prospects’ Mouths: Great tips in this post on using words your potential customers use for effective ad copy. I’ve also mined LinkedIn Q and A for… -
Overwhelmed by Social Media?
10 May 2012 | 4:09 pmI was recently interviewed by NeighborhoodNotes.com on the topic of “Choosing the Right Social Media Platform For Your Business” for their “Indie Business” section. Infographic on Social Media . (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The premise was that a lot of small business owners feel overwhelmed by social media. This is not a new theme when it comes to social media – it can be overwhelming and we know it. But I think a lot of people feel compelled to do it all and do it all at the same time. I know I am guilty of that from time to time as well. This article covers… -
Christian Reads… (So You Don’t Have To) – SEO Edition – May 2012
1 May 2012 | 10:41 amIt’s time to wake up from your haze due to those pesky April showers and smell those May flowers because I have some fantastic SEO articles and news items I’ve been reading from about the middle of April until now to share. So let’s get sniffing (that doesn’t really work… but we’ll go with it anyway)! Spring Flowers in Portland, Oregon – courtesy OregonLive.com We’re Hiring! View this news item We’ve recently announced that we’re looking to add an experienced account executive to our team. Amplify is a great place to work at and we… -
Labels and Other New Features in Google Adwords
27 Apr 2012 | 4:13 pmGoogle Adwords released a few new features this week that got me pretty excited. I can already see multiple ways these new features can be used. If you’re not excited enough already let me show you why you should be. I’m most excited about the addition of labels to add another layer of organization to campaigns. Here are three new features released this week starting with my favorite, labels: *All of the sub headings are links to the blog posts on the Adwords blog Slice and dice your data using AdWords labels I’ve been using label type hacks for years. I will append… -
5 Guidelines for Effective Hashtag Marketing, According to Peter Stringer
26 Apr 2012 | 11:21 amHappy Spring and welcome to the April edition of ‘According To’! This month’s post is a great change of pace from previous posts in the series and features Peter Stringer, the Senior Director of Interactive Media for the Boston Celtics. Peter is providing his top five tips for effective hashtag marketing based on his experience with hashtag campaigns for the Celtics. Over the past two NBA seasons, Stringer has launched and cultivated social media channels for the Celtics. His efforts have led to over 6.4 million “Likes” on Facebook and over 470,000 followers on…
-
SearchBlogger
-
A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Hashtags
16 May 2012 | 9:35 amWhether you’re new to Twitter or are just thinking about signing up, learning more about hashtags will benefit your business. In this article, I’ll look at what hashtags are, how to set them up, and how you can use them to your advantage. What is a hashtag? A hashtag on Twitter works as an easily identifiable label for any topic you want to discuss. For example, if you were organising a conference, you might want the hashtag #PlumbConf12 for a plumber’s trade conference. Anyone attending the conference can search for this hashtag on Twitter to read what others are saying in the lead-up… -
Using Instagram for Business – Some Creative Ideas
15 May 2012 | 8:27 amIf you’re not already using Instagram for business or have never heard of it, this article will provide a quick introduction to the free photo sharing app that’s taken the world by storm. Instagram was recently bought by Facebook for $1 billion, so they clearly feel it has potential on a number of different fronts. What is Instagram? As mentioned in the intro, Instagram is a free photo sharing app. It allows you to edit and share photos on Instagram itself, as well as with your existing social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The filters you can apply to your images are what really… -
A Beginner’s Guide to Working with a Web Designer
11 May 2012 | 3:10 amMany start-up companies and small business owners have no previous experience of working with web designers. This post is not a stereotypical portrayal of ‘arty’ web designers being difficult to work with. It’s a quick guide as to how you can make your relationship with your web designer run smoothly so you get the best possible website for your business. Before you approach a designer Many people make the mistake of approaching web designers before they even have a rough idea of what they want from their website. If you ring a web agency and ask for a quote for a 5 page website, they… -
How Negative Online Marketing Can Kill Your Business
10 May 2012 | 3:13 amGetting into a disagreement online now and again may seem harmless enough, but what happens when it spirals into a campaign of negative marketing? In this article I’ll look at how online feuds with competitors can take over a business and ultimately lead to its demise. People falling out with each other is all part of life. However, when this happens in the online marketing arena, things can easily get out of hand. I’ve seen people lose lots of money and their businesses over the years by becoming embroiled in online disputes with other companies. Only yesterday there was a high profile… -
Three Easy Ways to Make Your Blog Stand Out from the Crowd
9 May 2012 | 4:55 amIf you don’t already know about the benefits of blogging, you should read this post first. However, if you fully appreciate how blogging can raise your business profile, improve your search engine rankings and increase online sales, then keep reading to discover three easy ways to make your blog stand out from the crowd. Be yourself It’s easy just to say “be yourself” when blogging. Lots of people think they’re being themselves, but in reality are actually being held back by fear. Don’t be scared to voice your real opinions on the issues that are affecting you, your business and…
-
Search Blog Asia - SEO Insights for China, Japan, Korea, Thailand...
-
Meilishuo.com – a popular social shopping website
27 Apr 2012 | 4:58 amMeilishuo.com is a very popular fashion e-commerce site in China. With significantly increasing numbers of users, comments about Meilishuo.com are also growing rapidly on various industry websites. Some commentaries have said meilishuo.com and mogujie.com have created a precedent for community-based e-commerce in China. So, what does meilishuo.com look like? Introduction Meilishuo.com was founded in November [...] -
5 SEO Strategies to enhance your E-commerce web site
27 Apr 2012 | 1:39 amEveryone who has an idea always wants to sell their product online to reach the largest possible audience. I am writing this because it scares me to see how many E-commerce sites are out there which are not search engine and user friendly and which will struggle succeeding organically in many search engines as a [...] -
How Baidu and Weibo Rank Weibo Feeds Differently
23 Apr 2012 | 3:45 amThe level of noise surrounding China Search Social integration recently got amplified after Baidu improved the indexation scale of Sina Weibo feeds. The next question that online marketers may ask is how they can benefit from this, by improving their presence on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s) of Baidu and Weibo. An interesting finding [...] -
Baidu Indexes Weibo Feeds and Weibo Shuts down Comments – China Search Social Integration
11 Apr 2012 | 2:08 amAbout 4 weeks ago, as written about by my colleague Daniel, Baidu increased the indexation volume of Weibo feeds to accept Sina Weibo comments. Now for any popular terms, Baidu Search Engine Result Page (SERP) will show Weibo feeds in a scrolled-down frame in the same way Google uses to display Twitter feeds. This new [...] -
Rich Media Ads VS PPC
2 Apr 2012 | 11:47 pmIn the early stage of the Internet, most advertisements were Banner ads shown as words and flat pictures on the network. They passed direct stimulation to the audience. The information transmission of text image ads is simple and straightforward. The required network traffic is small and it’s loved by advertisers. PPC also belongs to this [...]
-
Michigan Internet Marketing Firm | Big Daylight Group | SEO & PPC
-
GM Pulls $10M Ad Spend from Facebook: A Big Mistake?
16 May 2012 | 9:22 amYesterday, with Facebook’s IPO looming on the horizon, General Motors suddenly pulled its $10 million dollar Facebook advertising spend, alleging that Facebook ads don’t work. Researching the buzz about this issue across the Internet, people are saying that Google ads far outperform Facebook ads, that Facebook needs to take marketing more seriously, and ultimately that this is disastrous news for Facebook investors. HORRORS! But here’s what I’m wondering: when comparing Facebook to Google, are people making the mistake of evaluating numbers in a literal, apples to… -
Google AdWords New Rotation – Good For Google
3 May 2012 | 10:02 amA couple days ago, Google announced that they are changing the way advertisers can control their ad rotation with Google AdWords. For years, you’ve been able to set your campaign ads to three options: Optimize for Clicks, Optimize for Conversions, and Rotate Ads Evenly. Google’s new changes coming up will only affect the last option – Rotate Evenly. Starting next week – any campaigns that you might have opted into “rotate evenly” mode will only stay on that setting for 30 days max. Afterwards, your ads will then automatically be changed or… -
Negative SEO: Fact or Faked? Or Just Stupid?
26 Apr 2012 | 11:35 amThere’s been a fair amount of uproar in our admittedly rarefied world about not only the possibility, but seeming probability, of negative SEO. Negative SEO (also called Link Bombing, also called Rogue Element Initiated Electronic Pariahfication (OK, I made that up)) is the apparent ability of an online competitor to create (either via simple application or purchase) an influx of bad links with keyword-heavy anchor text pointing at a competitive site, thus impacting their competitor’s ability to rank and, potentially, attracting Google’s Eye of Sauron spam detection and… -
SEO for a Redesign (Part 2) – 10 More Tips for Saving Search Engine Traffic
23 Apr 2012 | 8:39 amIn our first post on SEO for a Redesign, we evaluated basic steps like: Being careful not to totally delete large sections of your website. Similarly, being careful not to delete copy from website pages. Carry over all Title and Meta Description tags. URLs & URL Structure: Don’t rename them unless you have to, and if you must, rename them to something search-friendly and that mitigates canonical issues. 301s: It’s crucial to 301 all old website URLs on a page-to-page basis. HERE’S A SECOND ROUND of advanced tactics to ensure your new site is on a path to success: 1. -
The Right Way To Market Yourself on Etsy
19 Apr 2012 | 8:48 amA ridiculously talented friend of mine has an Etsy store where he showcases his award-winning, artisan pottery. Although the store has been a success since he opened it, he recently asked me to check out a cheap marketing service that promised to increase his traffic even more. So I checked it out. And boy was I alarmed by the potent blend of SEO snake oil that I found. I wrote back and said, “Do not move forward with this company. I’ll explain. In fact, I’m inspired to write a blog post about this.” My initial intention was to review basic Etsy SEO tips – but I…
-
Molosomar, Inc.
-
The first step to effective lead generation
7 May 2012 | 9:12 amThere is an old adage that says “If you’re advertising to everyone, you’re advertising to no one”. That is true today more than ever. So what does that mean for your lead generation efforts? It means before you invest a dime on advertising, or try to drive traffic to an offer, the first thing you... -
This could be your firm’s best investment this year
30 Apr 2012 | 10:47 amConsider the revenue possibilities if you applied proven techniques to boost the teamwork between your Marketing & Sales departments. What if you had ways to assess the potential of what’s already underway in your firm? Imagine if you had multiple ideas on how to better use your marketing budget. Those real world insights have been... -
Staffing for lead generation
23 Apr 2012 | 10:19 amWhile there is usually more than one right way to do something, there is also more than one wrong way. This is definitely the case with staffing for lead generation. You can see disappointment coming when a firm posts a job opening and wants candidates who are “familiar” with various techniques. Online marketing is a... -
Why Pay-Per-Click leads are some of the best leads money can buy
17 Apr 2012 | 3:32 pmPay-per-click (PPC) leads are some of the best leads you can get for your money for one simple reason: They are targeted leads. When you use PPC, you have the ability to capture people right at their moment of interest. It doesn’t really get any better than that. When it comes to leads, nothing beats... -
What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and how can it help my company?
9 Apr 2012 | 1:17 pmMost businesses these days are missing out on potential customers they could be getting simply because they aren’t marketing online. One of the first things you should consider in your online marketing campaign is Pay-Per-Click, often referred to as PPC. I will define PPC and give you some reasons why you should be using it...
-
Ker Communications
-
Google Penalties
1 May 2012 | 9:58 amIf you have been reading about SEO for longer than a few minutes, you have probably found some variation of “build your website/write content for people, not search engines”. We have preached this from day one, but it seems like it may be one of those things that people read, but don’t really understand what it means. In light of Google’s recent announcements of an upcoming penalty for “over optimization“, an even more recent warning of a webspam algorithm update (now called “Penguin”), and a few years of algorithm updates and spam-fighting… -
Does Google Hate SEO and Want To Punish Your Website?
30 Apr 2012 | 10:39 pmThe sky is falling! Google wants to force everyone to buy PPC ads! Remove ALL links to your site and stop using any keywords at all! Oh how I wish I had a HTML tag to indicate sarcasm. The panic over Penguins and Pandas is spreading like wildfire. Please, relax. The sky is not falling. Legitimate SEO is not banned by Google or “dead” in any way. Creating a website that is easily navigated and understood by people and search engines, and has quality content which is promoted effectively and sensibly throughout the internet will not get you banned from Google. In case… -
Avoid Google Penguin Penalty for Webspam (Bad SEO): Start Making Sense
25 Apr 2012 | 6:27 amIf you have been reading about SEO for longer than a few minutes, you have probably found some variation of “build your website/write content for people, not search engines”. We have preached this from day one, but it seems like it may be one of those things that people read, but don’t really understand what it means. In light of Google’s recent announcements of an upcoming penalty for “over optimization“, an even more recent warning of a webspam algorithm update (now called “Penguin”), and a few years of algorithm updates and spam-fighting… -
Over-Optimized? Google’s New Penalty for Too Much SEO
17 Mar 2012 | 10:23 amAt SXSW, Google’s main search spam guy, Matt Cutts, announced that Google is releasing an algorithm update to target sites over doing their SEO. Google will attempt to “level the playing field” between websites with quality content versus those that are ridiculously optimized. (audio) A surprising thing about this announcement is that there is reason to believe that some penalties like this already exist. While there is no official word from G on existing over optimization penalties (except maybe this 2009 video where Cutts says there is no penalty), there have been many… -
Timeline Coming Soon to Facebook Business Pages
11 Mar 2012 | 3:20 pmWhat Will the New Facebook Timeline Mean to Your Business or Fan Page? Just when you thought you had your Facebook business page all fixed up with special tabs and a fan gate to encourage Likes, Facebook has announced the rollout of Timeline for business pages. While this is not going to be much more than a cosmetic rearrangement for many pages, if you have a highly customized business or fan page, there are some things you will need to know. One of the biggest changes from a marketing perspective is that, as of now, those “fan gate” pages that many use to hide content unless…
-
Sparkplug Digital
-
Ever Wonder How People Spend Their Time Online?
16 May 2012 | 10:36 amEver wonder what people do online? Here is a great infographic that highlight how people around the world spend their time on the web. It’s not just Facebook and YouTube all day, every day you know. It was featured on Social Media Today. The global online population (total people in the world who are online) will approach 2.5 billion in the next couple of years. Currently, approximately 30% of the world’s population is online and by some estimates almost half of those that are online will be on Facebook within the next couple of years. Some facts that stood out from the… -
Google Launches AdWords for YouTube
14 May 2012 | 9:51 pmFor those who do not count themselves among the 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, the news is that the website is turning computers into the second coming of the television, and naturally Google is steering the ship. The search giant’s quest for Internet omnipresence led it to acquire the website in 2006 and it is now amplifying its power with the addition of the AdWords Web metrics tool, this time called Google AdWords for Video. It wasn’t long ago that a little-known company called Orabrush started making headlines with a viral YouTube ad campaign that resulted in the sale of a… -
After 3 Years, Foursquare is Finally Growing Up
12 May 2012 | 7:02 pmMarketers take notice: Foursquare is in it to win it. And by win it, I mean it appears as if they’ve decided that it’s finally time to earn some revenue. You know… something that all companies, social networking startups included, eventually have to get around to (a friendly reminder to the aspiring Pinterest and Quora copycats of the world). Bravo Foursquare. It’s about time. I always knew you’d find a way. Earlier this week news broke that the company is currently knee deep in the process of preparing a redesigned version of its popular app, to be released sometime in July,… -
10 Resources for Learning About Local SEO
9 May 2012 | 12:41 pmLocal Search Ranking Factors David Mihm An annual survey of local SEO experts that provides insights into what factors are affecting local search. Local SEO Checklist for New Sites – Whiteboard Friday (video) SEOMoz Key takeaways: It is essential that you use the exact same name and information for each site you register your business at. Local SEO: 10 Tips for Ranking in Your Area Search Engine Watch Key takeaways: Make sure your Whois information matches your business address. Participate on local sites and forums. Explore opportunities for local press coverage of your business. 35… -
Find Your Niche In the Startup Ecosystem (Sharks, Dolphins, Whales…Oh My)
8 May 2012 | 10:13 amIn the startup world everyone stress the fact that you need to find a niche. Google’s niche was search, Yahoo was portals, Microsoft was software and operating systems, Apple was software, hardware and user experience. All these companies were funded by angel investors and venture capitalists. Their founders became household names (with the exception to Yahoo because no one really cares about them). These tech companies undoubtedly inspired Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Groupon, Zynga, Airbnb and so on. The social startup wave will inspire the next group of entrepreneurs and founders who…
-
Search and Social Marketing Services
-
Sometimes Doing Nothing Can Get You Further Than Doing Something
9 May 2012 | 9:11 amSometimes Doing Nothing Can Get You Further Than Doing Something Every time Google has an algorithm update, some people lose rankings, and others jump up. Most times you will only hear from the people who lost rankings. For the sites that I work with, some clients are always wanting to know the next thing to do. In Search, there is always something that can be done – links, content creation, technical issues, etc. But sometimes the best approach is to do nothing. Yup – SEO’s dirty little secret. Just like anytime WordPress updates it’s software, there is almost always… -
Need a Pagerank 7 Link?
23 Apr 2012 | 9:51 amNeed a Pagerank 7 Link? Amazingly, I still get emails such as this one: Hello, We are sending this e-mail to let our users know that we have launched a new PageRank 7 backlink campaign to help you increase your website’s search engine ranking and receive more visitors and eventually more customers to your business. The Pagerank 7 directories currently available are: http://www.Edhecmba.com http://www.Ncdcusa.org 100 links are available and links are for as low as 19USD for a year. Instructions are included on the websites, simply visit the websites if you would like to take this… -
Why Does it Take a Rankings Drop For A Client To Finally Listen?
20 Apr 2012 | 6:42 amWhy Does it Take a Rankings Drop For A Client To Finally Listen? Sometimes, you are the victim of success. The client has a #1 ranking in Google despite not listening to your warnings that they need to clean up their code, or implement the directives that you told them about. They are so busy with business that they hardly have the time to look at the website and it’s glaring issues that you warn them about. “But we’re ranked #1 in Google, so it doesn’t matter.” They say. And then it happens. They drop in rankings in Google. From #1 to the second page. They call… -
Is Cash Parking Worth It?
28 Mar 2012 | 8:43 amIs Cash Parking Worth It? Amazingly, I get traffic daily for my Godaddy Cash Parking Review, which was written almost 2 years ago now. But, since people are still coming everyday, it also tells me that others have gone looking for a good provider of this service as well. I wish I had some better news for you, but I don’t. Even with my “VIP” status within Godaddy’s system, the cash parking has been ok. For me it’s a matter of principle. Sedo doesn’t charge me to park my domains. Neither does Fabulous. Or Google. So the only way to justify in my mind the… -
Dominate and Dislodge
21 Mar 2012 | 8:15 amDominate and Dislodge There are so many seo vendors out there that talk about getting to the first page of Google. The reality is, if they are decent, that really shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish, given enough resources. The key for all involved is to reach that #1 spot in Google. Even a move from #3 to #2 is an increased jump in quality leads and traffic, but everyone knows that #1 is the ultimate goal. So, how do you go about getting to the top of the mountain? The first thing is to know what you’re up against. For the keywords you want to rank for, focus on what the…
-
Jordon Meyer - eCommerce Search Marketing
-
Google PLAs Gamed by eBay
28 Apr 2012 | 10:04 amSomeone just gamed Google PLAs (product listing ads) with a listing on eBay. Aside from the somewhat unique PLA display shown below, with 6 product listings to the right of the SERPs; you can see that the advertiser added a red border to their product image. This essentially highlighted the listing and made it look like Google featured it out of all the other listing ads. But, it was just a trick with the product image. You can see the highlighted border in the image. *I only added the arrow. Google PLA Highlighted Ad You can see in the actual eBay listing that the product image still has the… -
Click-To-Teleport Customer Overflow Issue
1 Apr 2012 | 7:31 pmWhile most businesses would love to get a customer in the door, the new Google AdWords Click-To-Teleport creates another problem, getting customers to leave! Their terms of service states that Google is not responsible for return teleportation. This leaves heaps of customers in the store, and adventurous shoppers wondering aimlessly around unfamiliar towns. CTR is so 2011. The only metric I care about now is Teleport-Through-Rate! ~ Greg A. Since the April Fools debut of the beta AdWords program, businesses have been teleporting customers from couches, right into the showroom floor. Business… -
Google AdWords Seller Ratings Update
2 Mar 2012 | 11:33 amAnother Google AdWords update spotted today. It looks like another beta that only impacts the display of an AdWords ad. The update is that they expanded the Seller Ratings extensions to a pop-out preview, similar to the Landing Page preview. Maybe it’s more than just a new look. The preview also includes a second instance of your ad. Does it count as two impressions, once it is expanded? Does this count against your CTR, impacting your quality score? The same question goes for the current landing page preview. What this does show, is the continued importance of Google Seller Ratings. If… -
Big AdWords Update: Google Display Network Tab
27 Feb 2012 | 7:40 pmA Beta update rolling out in AdWords finally allows search marketers to see keyword data from their Google Display Network. Finally! Seriously…this has been a BIG frustration with search marketers for the last few years. Google LOVES to take your money and pump out impressions and clicks through the Google Display Network (GDN) but never reports on granular performance. You could have 100,000 keywords driving $1mm worth of clicks to your site and Google would never tell you which keyword did what. How are you supposed to optimize an account with no keyword data? Current (Old) GDN View This… -
AdWords Enhanced Sitelinks – Update Your Architecture
16 Feb 2012 | 12:17 amGoogle’s recent AdWords Sitelink Extension update is a big one. It seems as if Google updates something in AdWords several times a month. While many updates are nice, they are not all game changers. The most recent update, called Enhanced Sitelinks is a game changer. You essentially get rewarded with A LOT of SERP real estate if you have closely themed Ad Groups within your campaign and those Ad Groups have ads that are closely related to your Sitelinks. Best practice is to theme everything from top to bottom very closely to each other, and this update will reward that practice. The problem…
-
Koozai® - Your Intelligent Digital Marketing Agency
-
Review of SMX London Presentations – Part 1 #smxlondon 2012
16 May 2012 | 11:18 amI’ve just spent the last two days at SMX London where I’ve learnt a lot, given a presentation and met lots of new faces. Here I’m going to summarise key points I’ve learnt from the sessions I attended. The event started with a keynote with Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who discussed how he came to be at google, how he rewrote the whole ranking algorithm when he joined and what google are moving towards now. I think his biggest take away was his explanation of Google working to understand ‘things’ not just keywords. A thing was described as being an… -
SEO & Social Media Power Tools from #smxlondon 2012
16 May 2012 | 10:20 amProbably one of the sessions at SMX with the most content, four brilliant brains quickly covered the tools that they use. Here’s the majority of what was said during the presentation! Mike King What tools used for on page analysis: Screaming frog to crawl and see info per URL Scraper for chrome Httpfox for response codes Page speed plugin Keyword research tools: Yahoo clues: for demographic data Keyword eye: keywords based on site content Soovle Ubersuggest Scrapebox: black and white hat tool for long tail keywords Seogadget Api tool Gofish: twitter scraper based on keywords to find… -
Ecommerce SEO and Beyond – The Complete Guide
16 May 2012 | 9:43 amShopping online has become part of everyday life. The simplicity of being able to log onto the internet and buy what you need instead of making a round trip to the shops means that more and more shops are going online. If you sell products online then getting the SEO right on your Ecommerce site has never been so important. With so many online shops live it is now just as competitive online as it is in the high street – perhaps even more so. Ecommerce sites by their nature don’t usually include a lot of content, which means that site owners need to ensure that they address other… -
5 Of The Best Google Webmaster Tools Features
16 May 2012 | 8:43 amHi. Here’s five things you can do with Google Webmaster Tools. If you don’t use it, you are missing out on an excellent free tool. In this video, I’ll tell you five things, that you may not know, that you can do with this program. Number one, click on Search Queries to see which keywords are driving visitors to your site, as well as what their average ranking position is on Google. It’s important to set the filter just above the results. Usually, I’ll set this to say “web results” as opposed to image results, and so on, and my target market, say the… -
Keywords: Dead, Dying or Here to Stay?
16 May 2012 | 6:15 amAs a Copywriter within the Online/Digital/Inbound Marketing industry, I’ve always been taught to write with freedom…and keywords. There’s always been a dual aspect to writing copy, just as there is with many other SEO disciplines – work on quality, but don’t forget what you’re targeting. A Brief History For as long as people have been optimising websites, there have been keywords. These magical terms have informed search engines as to what a page is targeting and allowed them to make a decision on where they should rank. In days gone by, or in what we can…
-
SEO Andy
-
Ways to Benefit from Social Media Marketing
16 May 2012 | 11:34 amWhy should you use social media when marketing your business? It allows you to make your company more visible. Additionally, it lets you convey your sales pitch to a global audience. Do you need more convincing? Check out these latest statistical facts. On average, a person spends around 7 hours and 45 minutes on his or her Facebook page each month. (Source Facebook statistics) If Facebook were a nation, it would rank third among the world’s largest countries. And, with around 901 million active users, as of April 2012, (source 3) it has a population twice bigger than that of the United… -
How to “recover” from Google Penguin
14 May 2012 | 10:58 amIt’s been little under a month since I last wrote about the Google Penguin Update, and although many of the shouty people have gone off there are still a few white hat SEO’s asking “how do i recover from penguin attack?” The truth is that there are a few websites that have been innocently hit by this update. I’ve had contact with a few of them and checked what they say – it would seem they are right and that actually this is not a “anti spam penalty” but rather “spam prevention update”. This is to say that rather than a… -
Why Search Engine Submission is a Waste of Time
11 May 2012 | 5:58 amSearch Engine submission is the means by which you can tell a search engine that your webpage / website exists and to please go and crawl the site. Here is the Google URL Submission page and Bing’s submission page. In days gone by Search Engine submission was useful for new websites to give a little wave and say “hi, please take a look at me”, it then evolved to be used a little more towards look at this new page or “section I made, aren’t I great?” The answer was no, you are spamming search engines and crawlers. Eventually, although the tool was and is… -
UPDATED: Handcrafted Jewellery in Scotland
10 May 2012 | 2:29 pmToday see’s the launch of RhonaPetrie.co.uk a wordpress based e-commerce website. The website has been built around the WooCommerce templating system and is designed to work across all browsers and device types through use of responsive web design. The website has been designed to be as clean and elegant as possible, whilst fitting in with a recent brand design update. The colours around the website are chosen to reflect the high quality nature of Rhona’s jewellery. To complement this we’ve also used a brightly coloured background for product images, which draws the… -
EU Cookie Directive – What it means for business and SEO
6 May 2012 | 10:32 amFor a while now I’ve been on the trail of a solution to the “EU Cookie Directive” which in it’s most basic form means that any cookie which your website uses that is not used for an essential service (eg. controlling a shopping cart) must have “direct permission” of the user before it can be implemented. For many this would mean we need permission to track analytics, this is not an essential function of a website. Will ICO become the Cookie Monster? Before we begin we need to consider the question… What is a Cookie? For most users of the web cookies…
-
Network Intellect
-
4 Common SEO Mistakes
16 May 2012 | 1:00 amThere are common errors seen among non-SEO friendly websites. With this in mind, here are four of the most common mistakes found on websites that have been designed without consideration for SEO best practices: 1. Two Homepages When it comes to search, duplicate content is a big no-no and results in a site being penalised in organic rankings. This happens frequently. It is often necessary for sites to have homepages residing at two different URLs for the sake of the hierarchical index files. However, broadcasting the fact that you have both of them is a big mistake. 2. Non-optimised Images… -
6 Questions For Social Media Marketing Success
14 May 2012 | 1:00 amIn order for companies to gain the maximum benefit from social media marketing, there needs to be a reasonable effort to set goals, plan resources, and manage expectations. Depending on objectives, there are a number of ways to measure social media success and it is important for companies to take a practical and business goals approach to marketing on the social web. A big step toward a practical approach to social media marketing involves an understanding of customer social preferences and needs along with how the business will meet those needs through social media engagement. In order to… -
5 Rules Of Modern Marketing
11 May 2012 | 1:00 amWhen it comes to modern marketing, there are rules you should follow to make marketing right. This kind of marketing takes into account how the modern landscape and modern consumers have changed. Here are five rules you should take into consideration: 1. Do Not Hound Customers With Unwanted Information No matter how targeted the advertiser thinks the message is, it is still not targeted, relevant, or timely enough. Modern consumers are so overwhelmed with information that they frequently ignore ads and tune everything out. There are too many variables that affect purchases by any given… -
Optimize Your Shopping Feed for Google Instant
9 May 2012 | 1:00 am -
5 Ways To Add LinkedIn To Your Website
8 May 2012 | 1:00 amA study carried out by a web-based software and services firm, revealed that LinkedIn is the leading social network with regards to job recruiting. By adding LinkedIn’s social features to your company website, you have a good way of accessing a large recruitment platform and a targeted network of business contacts. A further study carried out by a marketing company found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. These findings demonstrate how integrating LinkedIn on your website can help improve the success of your business. With this in mind, here…
-
The Click Whisperer
-
The RSS Unsubscribe Button
10 May 2012 | 6:10 pmWe see a lot of calls-to-action asking us to “Subscribe to RSS” on Web 2.0 sites. Couldn’t these sites get into a lot of trouble if they don’t provide a means for their visitors to unsubscribe from those feeds? What do you think? -
Why make a Google+ Page and a Goo.gl shortened URL pointing to it?
10 Feb 2012 | 8:04 pmThe absolute benefits of Google+ are still in flux, but let’s just say that putting a +1 Button on your website or blog is a REALLY, REALLY GOOD IDEA. Why? Simple: there’s no faster way to “tell” Google about new content. It’s awesome how fast it works. Here’s a little ‘ferinstance: The last post on this blog, the one about the Facebook Cellphone Hoax, had organic search traffic flowing to it ON THE SAME DAY IT WAS POSTED! Whoot! You can see the +1 Button above the text of this post, sitting there in the line of the other social share… -
Your Cellphone Really Doesn’t Have a Name : Another Silly Facebook Hoax
8 Feb 2012 | 8:20 amThere have been a few fun “hoaxes” on Facebook. One was spreading around last night that I fell for, but soon thereafter figured out what the real deal is. The hoax that got me claimed “Your Cellphone Has a Name”. It involved the post of a single image with text directions inside. The directions read: Your Cell Phone has a name! Take the last three digits of your number (Example: ***-***-*618) Type it like this: @[618:0] in the comments below and hit enter. It’s name will appear! I, like the good “follower” I am, actually deduced that… -
Advertising and Marketing: The Limiting Reagents in the Business Success Reaction
21 Jan 2012 | 4:21 pmChemistry’s concepts illustrate truths of the business world. One of those concepts, the degree to which a reaction will proceed, is the concept of the Limiting Reagent. The quantity of product that will be yielded depends on the quantity of reactant that there’s least of. The simplest illustration of this concept of Limiting Reagents involves a matchmaker who is setting up dates between prospective couples. The matchmaker begins with single people and creates couples from them. Barring alternative gender choices, the number of couples the matchmaker can create is… -
Untrusting Your Intuition: Trying Something You’ve Doubted
11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 amYou’ve heard the axioms: Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. and How would you know if you haven’t tried it. How do you expect to get results if you’re only going to limit yourself to the tiny little circle of expectations you’ve started out with? In other words: How can you be certain what works until you’ve given it a shot? All too often our intuition and initial expectations limit what we’re willing to do.That spells bad news when it comes to marketing to any audience, despite how well you believe you understand them. Let me…
-
Experience Engineer
-
Facebook app that blackmails you to be more productive
11 May 2012 | 9:32 pmPlatform publishes embarrassing photos to blackmail users into being more productive Aherk! threatens to publish embarrassing photos to users’ Facebook profiles, in order to encourage them to complete tasks within a deadline. 9th May 2012 in Lifestyle & Leisure. via springwise.com This app is simple: The user defines a goal The user uploads a compromising picture The users friends decides if the user reached the timebound goal - if not, the picture get's posted I'm a big fan of social pressure to achieve goals. My biggest concern here, wouldn't friends indicate that the… -
President vs Congress. An awkward dialogue.
10 May 2012 | 10:13 amI'm a big fan of President Obama and his team communicating directly with the American people. It breathes true democracy, transparancy and getting everyone (that wants to be) involved. But more and more the white house is sending out emails asking the people to put pressure on Congress. I get that that needs to be done to get things moving along. But isn't that a sign of a broken system. It seems to be a lot of effort for a president to lobby the American people to go back to congress and lobby them to get decisions pushed through. That sentence alone I'm not American and have a… -
The Customer Journey (The Decision Ellipse) aka The New Funnel
26 Apr 2012 | 6:19 pmvia flickr.com An oldie but a goodie. Thanks to Brian Solis. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
The Customer Journey (The Decision Ellipse) aka The New Funnel
26 Apr 2012 | 6:19 pmvia flickr.com An oldie but a goodie. Thanks to Brian Solis. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Paul Bennett on Customer Experience [video]
15 Apr 2012 | 11:00 pmvia startupdigest.com A great little chat by Paul Bennet on customer experience. Permalink | Leave a comment »
-
Shift Digital
-
How to Answer Twitter Questions Like the Pros Do
16 May 2012 | 3:51 amOne of the best ways businesses can use Twitter for client acquisition and brand development is by answering questions people ask relating to their service and/or product. It’s also a great way to grow your online community, and meet fellow colleagues in your industry. The concept is simple. All you have to do is set up keyword searches via software such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. For example, if you sell lawnmowers, set up a keyword search for the words “lawnmower” and “question”. That way, every time someone posts a tweet with the… -
How to Enable Google Authorship Information with Better Author Bio Plugin
15 May 2012 | 3:00 amBetter Author Bio is a wonderful plugin used by many WordPress sites to enable additional author information as well as links to the author’s social media profiles. With the advent of Google+, Google has begun encorporating Google+ Profile information within SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for both Google Web Search & Google News. The best part is that you can choose where you want to show your profile. You can also add links of your Blog, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles on the biography if you wish too. There are two methods in order to get your mug shot in… -
Which One Wins? Boardroom Meetings vs. Google Hangout
14 May 2012 | 6:00 amAre virtual office meetings better than the real thing? The Boardroom My professional life began in the nonprofit world. Like many other businesses, our days began with the whole team sitting around the boardroom table to discuss ongoing and new projects, issues, events and anything else that was of importance. From time to time we would even read a book together and talk about it in those meetings. In other words, this was our team time, and it turned out to be one of my favorite times of the day. Most of the time, our entire team was within 20 feet of each other. Accordingly, we got to… -
Test Drive of Google Drive
11 May 2012 | 9:00 amThe Shift Digital Team has been using Google Drive for about a week now and so far we’re loving it! For those of you who are not familiar with Google Drive, it is the optional replacement for what was Google Docs. One of the key features of Google Drive is that, like dropbox, it has as desktop app that creates a folder on your computer and allows you to two-way sync all of the files and folders between your computer and your Google Drive account. Some of the awesome features of Google Drive (and of the original Google Docs) are: You can view by list or by Grid Image previews of… -
How To Create Your Way to Your Dream Job
11 May 2012 | 6:16 amIt’s no secret that we are in a tough job market right now. Recent college graduates or those with little experience in their desired career field are going up against seemingly insurmountable odds in their job hunt. You often get to a point where you wonder what else you can possibly do or where else you can look for employment. Here is one idea: Create content to get the attention of an employer and land your dream job. Many businesses rely on content that is produced consistently to keep their website afloat in search engine results, and to keep their social media campaigns vibrant. 13%…
-
eProfit Partners
-
Marketing Lesson from Coachella
25 Apr 2012 | 7:22 pmThis past weekend, I was at the Coachella music festival in southern California. It’s a great time. Amazing music, warm weather, good food. And EXPENSIVE beer. Regular: $7 (12 oz) Large: $9 (16 oz) Yikes! Might as well go for the big one, right? After all, it was a scorcher that weekend (over 100 every day). So, I went for the large. And out of curiosity, I asked the bartender if they ever sell any “regular” $7 beers. He said they only sell about one regular beer an hour. Translation: probably only 1% of people were buying regular, with 99% were buying large. Marketing… -
7 Steps for Building a Profitable Online Advertising Campaign From Scratch
14 Apr 2012 | 4:50 pmRecently, I was advising a potential client about their online advertising strategy. As I started listing the steps we take to build a profitable campaign, I realized it would be helpful to share our methodology with other people, so I’ve decided to post it here on the blog. Step 1. Identify Your Ideal Customer The first step is to identify whom you want to target. Who are your ideal customers, and how can you reach them online? Ask such questions as: What keywords are they searching? What websites are they visiting? What are their demographics and psychographics (interests and… -
The Most Important Part of Any Advertisement
9 Mar 2012 | 5:59 pmLast week, I was creating a new Google AdWords campaign for a client of ours, a very large (multi-billion) medical device company. As I was brainstorming hooks for the ads, I was reminded of Eugene Schwartz’s book Breakthrough Advertising – one of the best books ever written on the topic of copywriting, in my opinion. One of the smartest pieces of advice Schwartz gives is to tailor the headline of your advertisement based on the stage of your customer’s awareness of your product. The headline is the most important part of your ad because it either succeeds or fails in attracting your… -
Consumer Medical Device Company
1 Mar 2012 | 6:52 pm“We hired eProfit Partners to manage our online marketing and advertising. The results have been outstanding and our investment in their services has been profitable from Day 1. I strongly recommend that you consider eProfit Partners to manage your online marketing.” ~ Evan Birkhead, VP of Marketing at StressEraser -
Software as a Service (SaaS) Startup
1 Mar 2012 | 6:49 pm“eProfit Partners is our go to company when it comes to PPC and landing page strategies. They are specifically helping my company turn a profit on our Adwords campaigns. Phil is one of the smartest people I’ve worked with… I’m more confident in my own business with his help.” ~Rishi Shah, Co-Founder of Digioh
-
PPC Associates Blog
-
Use your competitor’s “Likes” tab to improve your Facebook campaign
16 May 2012 | 10:55 amOne of the complaints about Facebook since its inception is how dangerously accessible it makes everything – photos, status, updates. On the flip side, of course, knowledge is power. Here’s how to make knowledge about a competing brand’s numbers work for your Facebook advertising campaign. First, look up a competitor’s Facebook page and look for the “Likes” tab. It’s located on the upper portion of the page, below the cover photo. It looks like this: "Like" how much data you're about to get... This tab will show how many lifetime likes your competition has, but… -
The Tools of PPC Ignorance
15 May 2012 | 11:00 am“Learn to evolve and change because what was a month ago no longer is today. Survival is the ability to adapt and change when it’s needed.” EarlGrey, SEO About a month ago, I wrote a post about using Automated AdWords Bidding successfully for the first time. At the time, I believed I was writing a post that showcased how clever I was in figuring out how to use an aspect of AdWords that I had previously dismissed as only useful for folks that don’t know how to professionally manage paid search accounts. However, when I look back at that post, I see something somewhat personal and… -
Ten Impartial Tips on Choosing an Online Marketing Agency (from a Partial Observer)
14 May 2012 | 10:57 amImage credit: hcssdreamjob You’re probably reading this post with a high degree of skepticism, and I don’t blame you; getting advice on choosing an online marketing agency from the head of an online marketing agency is like asking the IRS to file your taxes for you. But wait! Before you discount everything I’m about to say, know that prior to starting my own SEM agency, I spent eight years on the “client side,” and I negotiated with dozens of agencies (and selected several of them). So be skeptical if you must, but I suspect by the end of this article I will have convinced you that… -
Fitbit ROI Challenge recap – Week 3
11 May 2012 | 10:55 amOn the road to victory. Laura Rodnitzky’s daily walk to and from the PPC Associates office in downtown Chicago takes her roughly 11,000 steps, so she figured she was a favorite to win some weekly titles in the Fitbit ROI Challenge. Then she started studying her Active Score. “It made me realize how much of the day I was just sitting around and doing nothing,” said Rodnitzky, who is the company’s director of Change Management and the Chicago office’s general manager. “I wanted to change that.” A little awareness, a LOT of competitiveness, and one… -
A WFH case study: why flexible policies benefit everyone
10 May 2012 | 10:58 amThis is not the desk of a slacker. A recent post by Sean Marshall caught my attention. Regular readers know I’m a huge advocate of the remote workforce and think it brings incredible value to both companies and employees. Every time I see a post or article about remote working, I feel compelled to chime in! Sean nailed it terms of describing the benefits, so I won’t rehash it. Instead I would like to use myself and one of my experiences around working remotely as an example of just how significant this type of arrangement can be. Rewind a few years. I accepted a position with a…
-
Internet, Web and Online Marketing Blog by Brick Marketing
-
SEO Tips for an E-Commerce Site With Changing Inventory
16 May 2012 | 8:14 amUnlike an informational or lead generation business website, an e-commerce website can have thousands and thousands of pages. Product inventory is typically always changing and a product that may have been available yesterday, is no longer available today. What makes this situation tough from an e-commerce SEO perspective is that the search engines aren’t indexing a website every day which means that a visitor may click on a product page only to appear at a 404 error page or a “product not found” page because the search engine hasn’t yet realized that the page no longer exists. An… -
4 SEO Items to NOT Check Daily
16 May 2012 | 7:30 amIt’s important that site owners keep an eye on various items during their SEO campaign. You need to know how well your keywords are performing (how much traffic are they driving?), what visitors are doing once they arrive on your, how well is traffic converting and so forth. These SEO items will help you identify any trends that could be influencing the success of your SEO campaign, as well as where the best opportunities for growth are. But there are 4 SEO items that site owners could stand to worry a little less about. Checking these things daily is only going to drive you crazy! 1. -
The Right Way to Use Forums for Link Building
15 May 2012 | 7:00 amLink building is an important part of SEO because inbound links pointing to your website are what establish search engine trust over time. One of the most important things to remember when building links to your site is that the search engines want to see a diverse portfolio of links. If all of your links are from directories or guest blog posts, it’s important to branch out and create links in other ways too. Online forums are a great way to gain exposure and build links, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. The wrong way to use forums for link building is to take a black hat… -
What’s New in SEO for May 15, 2012
15 May 2012 | 6:00 amWe have compiled the latest news and updates from the big three, Google, Bing and Yahoo as it relates to SEO and the search engines overall. WHAT’S NEW THIS WEEK WITH GOOGLE: Google+: a mobile app with sense and soul Google is embracing the sensor-rich smartphone and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive. A Google guide to summer vacation Google shares tips to make planning, traveling and sharing your summer adventures a bit easier. WHAT’S NEW THIS WEEK WITH BING: Introducing the New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing Over the coming… -
Brick Marketing Launches Small Business SEO Service
15 May 2012 | 5:00 amThe team at Brick Marketing understands that many small business owners don’t have the budget to hire either an in-house SEO expert or a full service SEO company to manage their onsite SEO and link building campaigns. However, just because you don’t have the marketing budget to pay for SEO services on a monthly basis that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest in SEO at all! To help small business owners that want to get their SEO off the ground and heading in the right direction, Brick Marketing has launched an affordable small business SEO solution for a onetime cost. Brick…
-
Eugen Oprea
-
WordPress SEO Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Getting More Traffic
9 May 2012 | 8:14 amIf your website is one of the 70,000,000+ that use WordPress, then you are doing it the right way. But that’s just the platform and when it comes to promoting your website on the web you need to think seriously at SEO among others. That is why in this article you will learn what WordPress SEO means and how you can optimize your website for search engines. Before getting started I would like to inform you that robots are getting starter and you cannot trick them anymore. That is why, I would encourage you to write and optimize with your audience in mind and not Google or other search… -
How to use Advanced Segments in Google Analytics
5 Apr 2012 | 7:24 amYou know that you need to take Google Analytics more seriously, but you tend to avoid it sometimes. Am I right? If I am, then you can take this opportunity to learn more about Google Analytics Advanced Segments, what they are, why you should use them and how you can use them to get more insights from your data. I will show you how you can create Advanced Segments and give you some examples you can apply for your website immediately. What are Advanced Segments? Advanced Segmentation is a tool you can use to slice and dice your Analytics data with great precision. Advanced segments allow you to… -
The Friday Wrap: Making decisions
30 Mar 2012 | 3:19 amIn February I was talking about taking action and this is what I’ve been doing in the meantime. It involved a lot of planning, using calendars and making decisions, which is something that I would like to discuss with you today. At the end of 2011 I promised you an amazing 2012 and this is what you will get. I worked a lot behind the scenes and you will see the results in the coming weeks. But before that, I have a question for you: How do you make good decisions and how do you know that they are good? Let’s start from this and continue the conversation in the comments below. Now,… -
Premise Review – Membership Site & Landing Page Software
1 Mar 2012 | 5:21 amUpdated March 28, 2012 Whether you are just starting a blog or you are an experienced entrepreneur, you need to get an income with your website. In order to get an income you need to have something for sale whether it is a product, like an eBook or course, or maybe some services. But what is the best way to make your products available for people to buy and attract people to buy them? If you are tech savvy that’s an easy question, but what happens if you are not able to custom code a landing page or setup a membership software that requires hours of hand-on work? Luckily, Copyblogger… -
The Friday Wrap: Take Action
3 Feb 2012 | 8:08 amToday I am going to take a different approach with the Friday Wrap. From now on, you will get along with the best articles from last week 1-3 action items that will help you achieve more with your business. As promised, this is part of my goal to increase the quality of content on this blog. This week we are preparing for an amazing 2012. So, do not delay and take action immediately: Setup goals for 2012 – I know that we are in February now, but if you haven’t outlined your goals for 2012 yet it’s time to do it. If you don’t do it, you will just walk around without a…
-
The Gridd
-
4 Ways Google Site Search Can Improve Your Site
25 Apr 2012 | 6:33 pmPeople and companies spend countless hours wondering what type of content they should write for their readers and what pages they need to create in order to establish a better user experience. They poll, look at past content success, exit pages, and more, but what most don’t realize is that their visitors have been telling them what they want all along. The solution to this problem is found in Google’s Analytics’ Site Search. Site Search is a category in Google Analytics which allows you to see what users are searching for on your site. This does not measure the data from the search… -
Overview of Google AdWords Anti-Spam Enforcement
12 Apr 2012 | 12:21 pmGoogle has released a video that gives a valuable overview of the company’s advertising policy enforcement for its popular AdWords program. While Google has offered some information about their AdWords enforcement techniques in the past, the new video is an especially clear and concise explanation of how Google prevents scammers and spammers from infiltrating AdWords. David Baker, who runs Google’s ads policy engineering department, narrated the video. “When we find a scam, we don’t just ban one ad,” Baker says in the two-minute video. “We ban the… -
Clear Password Creation Guidelines Increase User Registration [Study]
2 Mar 2012 | 11:18 amNew research from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society sheds light on the factors that make it harder for users to efficiently create passwords and offers new ideas for developing user-friendly site designs that prevent user frustration and streamline site maintenance. It has become common for websites to ask users to register and create passwords before being granted full access. Researchers Soolmaz Moshfeghian and Young Sam Ryu set out to make site designers aware of the barriers users encounter when they try to create passwords. They also wanted to help designers come up with ways to… -
Google Panda Update: One Year Later [Infographic]
1 Mar 2012 | 5:39 pmA year ago, Google rocked the SEO world with its Panda update. Panda was an addition to Google’s search rankings algorithm containing over 200 ranking factors. It was designed to filter out low quality or “thin” content from its search results. In other words, it kicked half-assed sites to the curb so quality sites could triumph. While this update sent many looking to Panda-proof their site and follow numerous Panda survival guides, only 12% of searches in the U.S. were said to be impacted. The penalized sites were typically content farms like EzineArticles.com, affiliate sites lacking… -
Herd Mentality a Key Factor in the Success of Group Buying Sites [Study]
23 Feb 2012 | 5:29 pmA new study by researchers from Rotman School of Management in Toronto looked at two models commonly used by group buying sites and determined that knowing how many others have already signed on for something makes people more willing to spend money. The study, which was conducted by Rotman professors Ming Hu and Mengze Shi along with graduate student Jiahua Wu, attempted to find out why group buying websites like Groupon or LivingSocial are so much more successful than earlier group buying sites such as Mobshop and Mercata. One thing they discovered is that when a group buying site tells…
-
AdWords Management Software - WordWatch » AdWords Blog
-
7 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
7 May 2012 | 11:47 amI’ve met a few people who seem born to be entrepreneurs. They make it look easy to succeed and to fail, and I know that cannot be easy. I just look around and see how many people succeed in spite of themselves as opposed to those who really understand how to be a successful business person. I tried to make a list of what the characteristics of the people who were doing well, and then I did some reading online. Here is a short list of the common traits I found: You have to like what you are doing. Be passionate. If you don’t you’ll never motivate yourself to be truly successful. Be… -
Two (not so) Great Developments In Google AdWords
4 May 2012 | 11:55 amAdWords is one of most dynamically developing Google products. There isn’t a month without Google boasting a new AdWords feature. Users and bloggers alike are thrilled and praise Google for great work they are doing to make advertising simpler and better. As I share the excitement, I cannot but notice that a lot of those features come with certain flaws. Let’s look into two of them. Adgroup level Impression Share Google released this feature at the expense of data recency. No more impression share metrics for yesterday folks! If you were using this metric for optimization (and smart… -
Understanding Backlinking and SEO
2 May 2012 | 12:19 pmThe following is a guest post. Backlinks are one of the crucial ingredients of SEO. Besides proper keyword usage in SEO strategies, backlinking is something that you should never neglect. Without backlinks, your website may not reach its target audience. Backlinks, also known as inbound links, incoming links, inlinks and inward links, are incoming links to a web page or a website. Search engines use a number of backlinks to determine the popularity, importance and rankings of a website. What are these backlinks? As the name suggests, a backlink is a link that points users or search engines… -
Ad Rotation Update: A/B Testing In Jeopardy
1 May 2012 | 2:08 pmPPC professionals and advertisers all over the world have been up in arms since Google announced the latest AdWords update. The change, meant to improve the performance of campaigns and prevent advertisers from serving less relevant ads, is putting a limited timeframe on how long one can evenly rotate their ads. Instead of being able to evenly rotate your ads, regardless of performance, for as long as you’d like, Google is capping that period at 30 days. After the thirty days AdWords will display only the ads expected to generate the most clicks. Each time a new creative (text or otherwise)… -
Avoid Over Optimization With The Right Copywriting Techniques
30 Apr 2012 | 11:50 amThe following is a guest post. Are you one of those who are getting deeply anxious and concerned about Google’s many algorithm updates and the effects it can bring to your site’s rankings? Well, you’re not alone in that. Google’s announcement really got people on pins and needles and worried about what the future would hold for their respective sites. The truth of the matter is that you can actually avoid being penalized by Google if you employ the right search engine optimization methods from now on. One of them has something to do with producing the right content. Effective…
-
Web Gnomes
-
Book Review: Love is the Killer App
15 May 2012 | 7:00 amOn Valentine’s Day this year, Chris Brogan published a blog post called Happy Birthday to Love. I was intrigued and clicked on the article (see the benefits of a good headline?!). It was essentially a plug for Tim Sanders’ book Love is the Killer App, which was turning ten years old. Since I value Brogan’s ideas and outlook on life, I decided to give this book a shot (note that I’m usually not easily persuaded to buy things, but if somebody I trust recommends a book, I usually read it). I finally got around to it this past week. (Yes, I have a large stack of… -
Gnome Likes: Content Types, Penguin Update & Moms Embrace Social Media
12 May 2012 | 5:17 pmHere at Web Gnomes, we stay on top of the ever-changing world of Internet Marketing so you don’t have to. We enjoy learning new tricks of the trade and putting them to practice in the work that we do for our esteemed clients. Here is some of the most helpful Internet marketing info we came across this week: Where Should You Put Your Content? Chris Brogan always has something useful to say… In this article, he addresses the difference between blog content and newsletter content. Here’s the short answer: I put information that sells on my blog, and information that nurtures in my… -
Gnome Likes: Google Places News, Life Lessons, Comp Shop Stats & Local Search Evolution
4 May 2012 | 9:30 amHere at Web Gnomes, we stay on top of the ever-changing world of Internet Marketing so you don’t have to. We enjoy learning new tricks of the trade and putting them to practice in the work that we do for our esteemed clients. Here is some of the most helpful Internet marketing info we came across this week: Google Places Reconsiders Reconsideration Requests – What To Do If You Are Suspended Quick note from Mike Blumenthal: Google is changing the way it handles reconsideration requests for Google Places. If your Google Places page is suspended, you may have to create a new listing. The… -
Google Analytics Features – What’s New?
3 May 2012 | 9:41 amGoogle Analytics is a free tool that many webmasters use to track their website traffic. There are several cool Google Analytics features that have been released in the last month or so, and I thought I would share some of these with you. Before we dive into the new features, let’s take two seconds to talk about what Google Analytics provides (if you’re a pro, you can skip this section): Audience: Find out how many visitors you had, where they live, how many are new vs. returning, how engaged they were on your site, etc. Traffic Sources: This set of reports tell you where your… -
Gnome Likes: Rich Snippet Spam, Penguin & Email Help
27 Apr 2012 | 12:33 pmHere at Web Gnomes, we stay on top of the ever-changing world of Internet Marketing so you don’t have to. We enjoy learning new tricks of the trade and putting them to practice in the work that we do for our esteemed clients. Here is some of the most helpful Internet marketing info we came across this week: Google Allows Spam in Rich Snippets with Schema.org The past few weeks/months, one of the topics circulating around the SEO web is the question about rich snippets & spam. What does this mean? Rich snippets are code segments that you can add to your site to help the search engines…
-
The Leverage Lowdown by Leverage Marketing Agency
-
Why Online Advertisers Must Adhere to Natural Selection
7 May 2012 | 11:20 amAdvertising has been around for centuries. We can examine ancient man and discover even back then they had advertisements for their limited products and services. Bottom line, every business has a message. Whether the message is meant to brand or … Continue reading → -
Bing Being Minimalist
4 May 2012 | 4:00 pmThere was once a boy named Bing who was rich. However, there was a more popular boy named Google who was notably richer. Bing strived to reach the opulence that Google had attained and became known for, but all of … Continue reading → -
Eleven Must Read Tips for Effective Mother’s Day Advertising
4 May 2012 | 8:00 amWhile most of us know that Mother’s Day is coming up on May 13th, many advertisers don’t seem to take full advantage of this big day. Mother’s Day has become the second largest shopping holiday, with many people not only … Continue reading → -
Bing Becoming More of a Search Contender with New Keyword Tool
23 Apr 2012 | 1:25 pmAt SMX West last week, Bing announced a whole set of new features now available in Bing Webmaster Tools, including one that I’m admittedly excited about, Bing Keyword Research Tool. While its functionality will differ slightly from Google’s Keyword Tool, … Continue reading →
-
Online Advantage Blog
-
Two key points to focus on providing unique, relevant content for visitors.
9 May 2012 | 5:34 pmGoogle’s latest Penguin and Panda Updates yet again reinforce the need for quality content. Demonstrate a genuine commitment to your audiences and provide quality content that is useful to them – its as simple as that. Whilst there is no question lots of factors are important for online success, content is critical for two key areas: Reinforcing the relevancy of your webpages so they are found by people looking for what you offer Providing a reason for other people on the web to share your information or link to you. Google Webmaster Guidelines state: "The best way to… -
New Facebook Search Engine - what should you do?
3 Apr 2012 | 7:55 pmA new Facebook Search Engine could provide great opportunities for your business, but you need to be prepared. This week WebProNews discussed the fact that Facebook has 22 engineers working on improving its search engine. With 800 million users, all clearly defined by interests, location and networks, the potential for Facebook to provide truly personalised search results (and targeted Ads) is great. As a search engine, it has the platform to work more effectively than Google’s new ‘Search Plus Your World’ feature which came online earlier this year. There… -
How well does your website meet the needs of your visitors?
21 Mar 2012 | 7:41 pmLast week I talked to a couple of business owners who knew their business inside-out: they were committed, experienced and provided great customer service. When it came to their website however, they were not clear exactly how their visitors would use it. They had not actually thought through the motivations of visitors and how they would navigate and interact with their site. They were not clear on the intent of new visitors.No matter what industry you are in, if you have a business website, the majority of new visitors will be at some stage of the buying cycle. The… -
Latest Google Panda Update Reinforces Quality Content
23 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmGoogle announced Panda 3.2 on January 18. The effects are flowing through the different data-centers around the world. While previous Panda updates punished some content-heavy sites (many say this was unfair), for this latest update Google has stated: “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users”. High quality sites in real terms mean high quality content. If you haven’t checked your Google Analytics in the last month or so now is the time. If you see a drop in traffic… -
Four Online Marketing Checks for 2012
21 Dec 2011 | 2:05 pm2011 has been a huge year of changes and innovations in online marketing and the online space in general. If you have found it difficult or overwhelming to keep up with everything during the year, then take a little time in early 2012 to catch up on a few important changes.It is difficult and debateable to distil things down to four points and there are of course many others including rafts of social media topics and points. But for a small or medium sized business owner or marketing manager its a good idea to be abreast of the following:1 Google Analytics Updates. Google…
-
Vertical Leap Search Marketing » BLOG
-
Avoid the Penguin Panic – How you can Recover
9 May 2012 | 6:30 amA few days in the constant talk of Penguin hasn’t died down and as Ellie mentioned earlier today, there are even emails going around trying to panic people into spending money by changing SEO company. Running around panicking won’t mean you will see improvements! Also reacting in a knee jerk way could make a non problem into a problem. So,what do you really need to do in the light of these changes? Identify a Problem Have you actually been hit by Penguin? Check your rankings and traffic. If you have a penalty then around the 24th April you should have seen a drop in your… -
Do you serve Penguins?
9 May 2012 | 5:48 amHow can something this cute possibly be bad? Last week Google rolled out a new algorithm update called Penguin. This caused a huge amount of uproar amongst the SEO and the blogs and forums are full of people bemoaning the changes. This is not the case for me. I liked the Penguin update because I believe that this latest update forces the SEO industry to behave more like supermarkets and I love supermarkets. Seriously. I should probably explain that. Supermarkets are a marvel of the marketing world. You may or may not know this, but the layout and functionality of a supermarket is a carefully… -
Why you shouldn’t get in a flap about Google Penguin
9 May 2012 | 5:23 amBeware the rampaging Google Penguin! No, please don’t – the sky is not falling. In fact, Google themselves have said that Penguin affects just 3.1% of searches! We’ve seen a lot of scare-tactic marketing lately over Google Penguin… Yes, some websites have taken a hit in rankings. And yes, you do need to understand how this latest algorithm update will affect your SEO strategy. Many SEO agencies are busy terrorising businesses with the threat of penalties, complete loss of rankings and online obliteration…we think this is totally unnecessary and actually, a bit… -
Why does Google change title tags in results?
4 May 2012 | 5:34 amWebsite owners who look at their own sites’ positions in Google search results will have noticed that the pages sometimes do not appear as they were designed to appear. Theoretically, the meta title and the meta description tags in your header should appear as the text within the search result, but Google often ignores these elements to present its own choice of content – and what it displays can vary every time the page is shown in search results because each result is tailored to the assumed intent of the searcher. Some search marketing professionals and webmasters get… -
Social media and content marketing: a perfect pairing for boosting site traffic
3 May 2012 | 12:13 pmIf you’re a regular visitor to our site, you’ll know that we’re always banging on about how you need to integrate your search marketing with content and social media… We persist with our ‘Content-driven Search Marketing’ mantra because, quite simply, it works, and is now the only effective way to get the best results online. Lee Odden has just published a book on the very same subject. We’d like to take a moment and celebrate the achievements of one of our customers, Love Camping, an online business offering a huge wealth of information to the camping…
