SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

• Most Topular Stories

• Good SEO Requires Good Content

  SMS

  Nick Stamoulis

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:44 am

  If I had to pick one of the most important indicators of a successful SEO campaign, if not THE most important factor, it would be content. Without quality content that will engage potential clients and customers, there is nothing worth optimizing because website visitors will never have any reason to take any kind of action or convert. There are two kinds of content that are important for SEO purposes. First is the content on the actual website. The search engines want to provide users with the best possible search experience by providing them with search results that will satisfy their need.

• The Shady Practice Of Spinning Articles To Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

  Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:33 pm

  by Miriam Ellis If you've been walking on the sunny side of a clean street on your Search Marketing journey, hopefully you've skipped right past that dark and narrow alleyway in which lurks the spin monster. The practice of 'spinning' articles for directory submission isn't new, but it has come to my notice that marketing firms are currently utilizing this as a post-Panda effort for avoiding the dread Google duplicate content label, and I'm writing this article today to describe what the process is. If you're about to hire a marketer/SEO whose methods of promotion include submitting 'spun'…

• Fyves – Free Shirt Friday

  Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  This site is perfect for those of you who send me all these free t-shirts. Fyves is an online custom t-shirt and apparel service that ensures low prices, fast shipping, and great customer service in fact if they don’t respond to your problems in 12 hours they’ll send you this beautiful tee I am modeling here. Check it! If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

• Cup of Joe: Leveraging Culture

  Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News and Opinion

  Joe Hall

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:30 pm

  Back in November I shared this image on Google+. Chris Brogan, re-shared it and then 370 others followed suit! It is by far the most popular thing I have posted on Google+. Also, in April I blogged about how a piece of my content went viral on StumbleUpon, which as of today has gained over 1.2 million visitors. Every time a piece of my content goes viral its completely unexpected and leaves me asking, why? I could just ignore things and go eat hot dogs, but, as a marketer its my job to answer that question. Recently Jared Keller tried to answer this question, and in my opinion did a great…

• Hey Dentists: You’re On Avvo

  Small Business Search Marketing

  Matt McGee

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:46 pm

  From lawyers to doctors and now … dentists. Avvo has announced that it’s building out a dentists’ directory in the U.S. to complement its existing lawyer and doctor directories. But it sounds like this is still a work in progress. Avvo says dentists from all over the country are available to take part in the site’s question-and-answer product, but the actual dentist business listings are only formal right now in seven states: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Washington, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Dentists in other states, though, can still claim their listing by…

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  Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

• Fyves – Free Shirt Friday

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  This site is perfect for those of you who send me all these free t-shirts. Fyves is an online custom t-shirt and apparel service that ensures low prices, fast shipping, and great customer service in fact if they don’t respond to your problems in 12 hours they’ll send you this beautiful tee I am modeling here. Check it! If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

• ROI on out of the box stuff (UFC & Starcraft Sponsorships)

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am

  Recently we have done some out of the box marketing.  Everything from sponsoring Starcraft maps (millions of views for less than $1,000)  to sponsoring MMA fighters on FX (1.3 million viewers). Lots of people have been asking about the ROI on these things. I know in our world we look for instant gratification of I spent X and my return was a positive X. For these items both of them cost me about 1/10th of what I would consider a “test” buy for a affiliate campaign.  They were huge opportunities to put our brand in front of millions of people. Instant ROI ROI on sponsoring the…

• Affiliate Summit 2012 Closing Keynote With Slides

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:26 pm

  Here is my closing keynote with slides   Check out my experience with Cutting Edge Media

• UFC Sponsorship (w video)

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:25 am

  After traveling for the last… what seems like month I am back in the office catching up big time. I think I have been in the office a total of 4 days in the last 3 weeks. Ouch. I know there is a view versions of my closing keynote but none contain the powerpoint. I am making one with the powerpoint and will post it tomorrow (hopefully). Here is the video from the UFC on Fox event the other night if you missed our logo on the fighters Do you knowPace Latin?

• No longer speaking at events

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:45 am

  During my closing keynote at Affiliate Summit I announced that it would be my last time speaking. This marks the 50th time I have spoken in the SEO/Affiliate industry and it’s time to hang it up. This led to a barrage of questions on Twitter, Facebook, and emails. So I thought I would address the main ones here. Are you going to continue to attend events where you used to speak? Yes I will always attend Affiliate Summit and AdTechs for sure. These are must attend events for anyone in the space. I also like to attend the TechCrunch and Demo events. If you have not been to one of these…

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  Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News and Opinion

• Cup of Joe: Leveraging Culture

  Joe Hall

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:30 pm

  Back in November I shared this image on Google+. Chris Brogan, re-shared it and then 370 others followed suit! It is by far the most popular thing I have posted on Google+. Also, in April I blogged about how a piece of my content went viral on StumbleUpon, which as of today has gained over 1.2 million visitors. Every time a piece of my content goes viral its completely unexpected and leaves me asking, why? I could just ignore things and go eat hot dogs, but, as a marketer its my job to answer that question. Recently Jared Keller tried to answer this question, and in my opinion did a great…

• ‘Tweets Still Must Flow’. . .Except When Twitter Stops Them

  Cynthia Boris

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:16 pm

  Free speech is one of those topics that always sends people in a tizzy. Most would agree that censorship is a bad thing, but at the same time, it’s not right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. Unless, of course, the theater really is on fire. This idea is tricky enough when you’re talking about books and speeches and what people say on TV. Social media, makes it even trickier. Take Twitter. It’s a public forum where people can feel free to say whatever they want — to a point. Twitter doesn’t allow excessive spam or threats and they don’t allow…

• Social Sign-Ons Help Marketers Discover the Real You

  Cynthia Boris

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:13 pm

  Xander: “Sure he says he’s a high school student, but I can say I’m a high school student.” Buffy: “You are.” Xander: “Okay, but I can also say that I’m an elderly Dutch woman. Get me? I mean, who’s to say I’m not if I’m in the elderly Dutch chat room?” Xander makes a good point. The one cool and also creepy thing about communicating over the internet, is you can be anyone you want to be; a high school student, an elderly Dutch woman or Snow White. People create alternate personas in order to be better than who they are…

• US Mobile Ad Spend Grows Faster Than Predicted

  Frank Reed

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  In what seems like a rare moment these days, analysts are saying that they actually underestimated something rather than hyping it beyond recognition. Maybe there is hope after all . This time it is about mobile ad spending in the US. eMarketer writes The US mobile advertising market is growing far faster than expected, driven by the rapid ascension of Google’s mobile search advertising business, advertisers’ growing attraction to display inventory on tablet and smartphone devices, and the growing roster of mobile ad networks such as Google’s AdMob, Apple’s iAd and Millennial Media.

• Paid Apps Giving Way to In-App Purchase Model

  Frank Reed

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:14 am

  Interested in building that killer app that will be your grand slam home run of your career? Convinced that you are absolutely certain that there are AT LEAST 5 million people out there that would give up $.99 in a heartbeat for your “awesome” app or mindless game? Well, that is great copy for someone trying to recruit developers but the reality of the app world plays out a bit differently. That’s not to say that paid apps are dead. It’s just that they are going to be more like hitting the lottery rather than a solid business plan. According to a study by IHS Media…

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  Small Business Search Marketing

• Hey Dentists: You’re On Avvo

  Matt McGee

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:46 pm

  From lawyers to doctors and now … dentists. Avvo has announced that it’s building out a dentists’ directory in the U.S. to complement its existing lawyer and doctor directories. But it sounds like this is still a work in progress. Avvo says dentists from all over the country are available to take part in the site’s question-and-answer product, but the actual dentist business listings are only formal right now in seven states: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Washington, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Dentists in other states, though, can still claim their listing by…

• Small Businesses Measure Social Success The Right Way: New Customers

  Matt McGee

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:39 am

  This was a pleasure and relief to see: In a new report about small businesses and social media, SMBs listed “new customers” as their most important metric for measuring the success of social media marketing. Whew! Here’s a look at the chart from Borrell Associates, which is based on a survey of almost 4,300 small businesses last year. My fear was that “getting more fans/followers” would be the top response to that question … but it came in No. 2, which is still too high, but at least it’s a distant second to something that actually moves the bottom…

• Touché Google & Yelp! Foursquare Now Has Restaurant Menus

  Matt McGee

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:18 am

  Still not sure if Foursquare is serious about local search? Consider this: The site just added menus thanks to a partnership with SinglePlatform. I’ll explain below why I think this matters. First, how many menus are we talking about? How many restaurants? Foursquare says it’s getting more than 13 million menu items from nearly 250,000 restuarants “in major U.S. cities.” I don’t live in a “major” city, but I’m already seeing a couple menus here and there from restaurants in my small town. Bob’s Burgers & Brew is a small chain with…

• SBSM Flashback: January 2011

  Matt McGee

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:54 pm

  For 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. How to Be a Great Client Google: Goodbye to Real Estate Search Quick Way to Find Interesting & Influential Twitter Users 5 WordPress Plugins To Help Keep Your Blog Secure Foursquare Finally Finishes Features for Businesses 2010: My Blogging Year-in-Review Previous Flashbacks SBSM Flashback: December 2010 SBSM Flashback: November 2010…

• Google Emails To Let Me Know My Wife’s Merged Listing Will Be Merged Again

  Matt McGee

  16 Jan 2012 | 5:10 pm

  I think it’s great that Google is trying to improve customer service. In trying to fix my wife’s current merged listing cluster****, they’ve sent me more emails than I could’ve ever imagined. Yay Google! Except the last email they sent wasn’t so good. Yesterday, Google emailed me to let me know that they’re going to unmerge my wife’s listing, and then re-merge it with another listing. Here’s the email, and then I’ll explain after you see it. Isn’t that the nicest email? I’m serious – that’s exactly the kind of…

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  Yoast

• Tracking Outbound / Affiliate Links with getClicky

  Joost de Valk

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:30 am

  I use Clicky for most of my day-to-day tracking and analysis, only using Google Analytics for the harder analyses. One of the things Clicky can do most wonderfully is track outbound clicks. There's an issue however when you start routing your affiliate links through a script or on-site redirect. I redirect mine through /out/ here on yoast.com, but not all of the /out/ links need to be tracked. Let me show you how I do track the ones I need to track.Forcing Clicky to track a link as outboundFirst of all, you need to know that when you add a class clicky_log_outbound to a link, Clicky will…

• On WordPress Dashboard Widgets

  Joost de Valk

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:18 pm

  I was one of the first plugin developers to add a dashboard widget to your dashboard when you installed one of my plugins. I'm hoping people will follow me in doing the reverse as well. While it generates traffic, it doesn't generate sales. Let me show you.When I added mine, in the beginning, it drove lots and lots of traffic. People weren't used to it yet and thought I had somehow "found my way into core". Recently, I've added more elaborate tracking to my WordPress SEO plugin links. Allowing me to see how much traffic the individual sections of my plugin were sending back to my site. Let me…

• Search & Social – you can’t get the cream out of the coffee

  Joost de Valk

  11 Jan 2012 | 8:47 am

  Yesterday, Google launched "Search plus your World", intermixing search and social and providing even more "personalized" results. There's a lot of outcry about some parts of this, with people saying they don't want "personalized" results. I actually think that normal users do want personalized results and that this is, for the most part, a good thing.There's been some outcry though, because Twitter and Facebook aren't "highlighted" as much as Google+ in those new social results. Danny is doing some awesome reporting on this, first in "Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From “Miracle On…

• Stop SOPA, help the internet.

  Joost de Valk

  11 Jan 2012 | 4:31 am

  I'm not political in my posts normally, just like WordPress.org isn't and Matt Cutts isn't, but it's about time we put this whole SOPA thing to a stop. Since some well respected politicians are using my plugins and carry my news widget in their dashboard, I thought it was time I used that "power" to show them what SOPA would do to the internet and our world. Watch this video: If you're in the US, it's time to stop SOPA, so make your voice heard. If you're outside, call on your US friends to do what ever is needed to stop SOPA. As bloggers united, we can make a difference, let's make that…

• WordPress SEO Plugin Theme Integration Guide

  Joost de Valk

  1 Jan 2012 | 6:38 am

  Theme authors come in two different shapes and sizes: those who integrate SEO "functionality" into their themes and those who don't. If you're in the camp of integrating SEO functionality into your theme, you've got yet another choice to make: do you "yield" for site owners that have an SEO plugin installed, disabling your own SEO functionality or do you deny them that choice.For those who do decide to yield and for those who do not integrate SEO functionality into their theme, this is the guide to follow on how to make sure your theme works with all the major SEO plugins and more in…

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  Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon

• Great marketing, small marketing: How it all fits

  Ian

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:05 pm

  I did a presentation today at Emerging Media Conference: How marketing can change the world. I’ve distilled it down to the essential bits here. It’s not the best organized ever, but it covers the essentials. Give it a read: Streeeetchhh First, a quick mental stretching exercise: “Marketing” is not “Selling stuff”. “Marketing” is: Communications created to deliver and promote concepts and offerings that have value. Maybe we’re convincing our kids to eat broccoli. Or we’re trying to convince someone to go out on a date. Or we’re…

• Google Analytics Tutorial: Install (updated)

  Ian

  20 Jan 2012 | 1:27 pm

  I noticed that my original Google Analytics video tutorial is a wee bit out of date. Like, 4 years out of date. So, here’s a new basic install video:

• SOPA, and content thieves: They both suck

  ian

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:25 pm

  Watching the argument over online piracy unfold in the US is like watching chimpanzees drive a car. They fight over direction but they don’t give a crap if they take the rest of us off a goddamned cliff with them. Here’s my problem with both sides in this Greek tragedy: SOPA = stupid If it passes, SOPA will be a total failure: It’s written by a Republican congressman who, as near as I can tell, doesn’t own a computer. The guy violates copyright law on his own web site. Dude. Did you even know you had a web site? It’s being pushed by big companies who don’t…

• Webinar number 1: Internet marketing, content, and all that jazz

  Ian

  16 Jan 2012 | 5:23 pm

  Portent’s starting a free webinar series, presented by yours truly. The first one is January 31, 2012 at 11 AM Pacific time. I’ll be doing a deep dive into inbound search content social media internet marketing strategy: The role of search engines, social media and other channels in your internet marketing campaign. What ‘inbound marketing’ really is. How to use content to drive marketing. How to use analytics to direct your efforts. How it all fits together. These webinars are free, as in beer. You do have to register, though, so I’ll forever have your e-mail in…

• In internet marketing, be significant, or be roadkill

  ian

  13 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  You send an e-mail to 40,000 people, and get 1 response. Or, you run a Groupon deal that brings 1,000 new customers, who never buy from you again. Wonder why? You got everyone’s attention. They just don’t care. Now you’ve got a choice: Rend your garments, tear your hair and whine about how stupid the average consumer is these days. Or, you can realize something: Attention does not equal significance Getting attention is nice. It gives you a proto-audience: Folks who might stay to listen. Now, though, you have to show them you’re significant. That’ll get everyone…

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  SiteFox

• Politics, Small Businesses, and You…

  Samir Balwani

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  We don’t often talk about politics here, but we came across this awesome infographic that is definitely useful for all small business owners. If you’re not sure who you’re voting for this year, check out the infographic below to see how each candidate stands on small business issues. I’m sure it will change and hopefully we’ll get some updates. In the mean time check it out and let me know what you think. How much of an impact does the candidate’s stance on small business issues impact your choice? Credit: FastUpFront – Business Loans Made Easy.

• The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide [Free Download]

  Samir Balwani

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Let’s face it. Online marketing is difficult to understand and even harder to execute successfully. There’s so much talk about using Facebook and Twitter or having a conversation with your customers. How are you, a small business owner, supposed to find the time to learn all the in’s and out’s of online marketing? That’s why we put together the SiteFox Marketing Guide. It’s a 99-page guide that explains exactly what you need to know about marketing your business online. It also includes a set of action plans to help you execute a successful online marketing…

• Definitive Guide to Word of Mouth Marketing

  Samir Balwani

  22 Dec 2011 | 11:16 am

  Think back to a time you had a problem you needed solved. How’d you find the business you’re using now? Most likely you did one of two things: searched a business directory (maybe online) OR you asked a friend for a recommendation. Having people recommend your business is the basis of word of mouth marketing. It’s doing something so memorable that people talk about you; it’s tied to customer service, viral marketing, and just being a business people like working with. How are you maximizing your word of mouth marketing? What are you doing to make sure people talk about…

• Our Marketing Tracking Document [Free Download]

  Samir Balwani

  20 Dec 2011 | 1:00 am

  When we first started marketing SiteFox, we realized that it wasn’t all about big marketing campaigns or messaging programs. We quickly learned that it was really about maximizing our returns from each channel. One of the things we did early on was setup a document to track each channel and gauge its efficiency for registering new clients. The efficiency is based off a number we derived after deciding on how much of our revenue we wanted to invest in marketing. We’ve been using the spreadsheet for a while now and it’s really helped us strategically invest money in ways that…

• Dos and Don’ts for Your Small Business Newsletter

  Samir Balwani

  15 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  Although social media gets all the buzz, email marketing still continues to be an extremely lucrative marketing channel. Businesses are continuing to grow their email lists and connecting with consumers through their newsletters. Making sure you’re creating an active newsletter list directly effects your revenue from your emails. Following a few core rules will make sure you get the most from your list and keep your subscribers happy and opening your emails. Do: Use a Professional Template The first tip is to use a professional template. You’ll notice that a lot of people use the plain…

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  search engine marketing - Google News

• WeBuildRankings.com Announces Their Official Launch - PR.com (press release)

  28 Jan 2012 | 2:06 am

  WeBuildRankings.com Announces Their Official LaunchPR.com (press release)With the services provided by WBR, your website will gain links that are considered higher in value by the search engine algorithms. A link is the most valuable component of search engine optimization and internet marketing.and more »

• Google's new privacy policy will share user data across products - DM News

  28 Jan 2012 | 1:33 am

  National PostGoogle's new privacy policy will share user data across productsDM News“You can bring in more data from across the different Web experiences so you can build out that user persona more robustly,” said Alex Funk, senior manager of paid media services at Covario, a search engine marketing agency. “As far as marketers go, How Google+ Could Threaten Google's Core Search BusinessSearch Engine WatchGoogle Plus Opens To Teens Age 13 & UpReelSEO Online Video NewsGoogle plans to follow online activities of usersallvoicesHamilton Spectatorall 697 news…

• Vero Beach business owner gets marketing certification - TCPalm

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:17 pm

  Vero Beach business owner gets marketing certificationTCPalmThe certification requires advanced study in all areas of online marketing including search engine optimization, social media marketing, search engine marketing, local search optimization, content marketing, online display advertising, online marketing

• Market Target Launches Hometown Helper Service, Providing Internet Marketing ... - PR Web (press release)

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:18 am

  Market Target Launches Hometown Helper Service, Providing Internet Marketing PR Web (press release)Hometown Helper Service is designed to get small town businesses a revenue generating presence on the internet by incorporating custom websites (based upon Wordpress), search engine optimization, Google Places for Business, Adwords, Yahoo Local and and more »

• Market Target, San Diego's #1 SEO Agency Announces San Diego SEO Training Classes - PR Web (press release)

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:17 am

  PR Web (press release)Market Target, San Diego's #1 SEO Agency Announces San Diego SEO Training ClassesPR Web (press release)Since 2009, MarketTarget has been a leading provider of Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and SEO Training Services. As a full service San Diego SEO services firm, MarketTarget also offers full service web marketing, SEO consulting and more »

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  Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

• The Shady Practice Of Spinning Articles To Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:33 pm

  by Miriam Ellis If you've been walking on the sunny side of a clean street on your Search Marketing journey, hopefully you've skipped right past that dark and narrow alleyway in which lurks the spin monster. The practice of 'spinning' articles for directory submission isn't new, but it has come to my notice that marketing firms are currently utilizing this as a post-Panda effort for avoiding the dread Google duplicate content label, and I'm writing this article today to describe what the process is. If you're about to hire a marketer/SEO whose methods of promotion include submitting 'spun'…

• Don't Waste Time Looking at Web Data Until You Do This

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pm

  by Mike Fleming ...life is about taking action, and if your work is not driving action, you need to stop and reboot...hits and pageviews don't mean anything except that someone came to your site and consumed some content...metrics are a dime a dozen, so how do you know which ones to use?  They should have the following four attributes...Uncomplex - If you want action, everyone involved in the decision-making must easily comprehend performance.Relevant - they must be measuring the success objectives that are unique to you and your website.Timely - Even the greatest metric in the world is…

• The Difference between Good SEO and Great SEO

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:56 am

  by Stoney deGeyter Designing a great looking website is good. Putting it on a strong information architecture is better. Rolling out a newly optimized website is good. Checking it first is better. Investing in SEO is good. Investing in ROI is better. Optimizing your e-commerce site is good. Using optimized concantenation schema is better. Quick-fix SEO is good. Long-term SEO is better. Performing SEO correctly is good. Doing what you can quickly is better. Keyword research is good. Keyword research and segmentation is better. Adding keywords to content is good. Following user-friendly keyword…

• Where You Should Invest Your Web Marketing Budget

  16 Jan 2012 | 6:46 pm

  by Mike Fleming ...the bottom line for magnificent success is the people...invest multiple times more in her or him, or more of them, if you truly want to take action on your data. Otherwise, you are simply data rich and information poor...a great tool in the hands of your reporting squirrel is useless.  A free/inexpensive/underpowered tool in the hands of your analysis ninja will yield massive results that impact your bottom line...-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0Web data is easy to get at; and it can even be free.  Yes! That is awesomeness.  But, you know what's…

• Editing: Is social media realtime or permanent?

  13 Jan 2012 | 2:42 pm

  by Mike Moran As social media has (somewhat) matured, an interesting culture has grown up around the idea of editing social media content. And for reasons that I don't understand, it isn't one culture--it seems as though every kind of social media has developed its own culture around editing content. It is as if we can't decide whether social media is a realtime force that is stream of consciousness and should never be changed, or it is a permanent record of activity that ought to be updated as it changes, or something in between. Some kinds of social media (Wikipedia) couldn't exist without…

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  PepperJam Exchange » News & Events

• 191 Unlimited (5%) Launches Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange

  Jeff Mohn

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:36 pm

  We are proud to announce the launch of the 191 Unlimited (5%) Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange www.PepperJam.com Join this program NOW! About the 191 Unlimited Affiliate Program: 191 Unlimited was founded in 2002 with $191 and a dream. Long time best friends Parth Sharma and Girish Karnani took $191 to the casino and turned it into enough money to launch their first 191 Unlimited collection. The two college grads then loaded the samples into their car and went on a 2 month trek from NY to LA and back, stopping in as many cities as possible to show their line to specialty stores. The…

• Closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

  Leslie Stewart

  13 Jan 2012 | 3:43 pm

  We will be out of the office on Monday, January 16th for a federal holiday. We will however get back to business Tuesday! Thanks for your understanding.

• What is affiliate marketing? An Easy-to-Understand Infographic

  Leslie Stewart

  12 Jan 2012 | 10:14 am

  Welcome to the first in a series of educational infographics brought to you by the PJX team. An infographic takes complex information, statistics, or processes, and arranges them in a visually pleasing and easy to understand way. This way, information can be understood more quickly. Our aim is to better educate our clients, as well as the public on what affiliate marketing is, and how it affects commerce on a more global scale. We’ll be covering topics like design, marketing, branding, the affiliate space, paid search and more! View this infographic on visual.ly If you have any input on…

• Delta Apparel (1%) Launches Affiliate Program On Pepperjam Exchange

  Jenna Walsh

  6 Jan 2012 | 3:50 pm

  We are proud to announce the launch of the Delta Apparel (1%) Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange www.PepperJam.com Join this program NOW! Delta Apparel promises to consistently deliver quality, value and innovation at a price that meets the challenges of today’s marketplace. We specialize in 100% cotton, comfort fabrics in various styles and silhouettes complimented by an industry-leading color palette for youth and adults. Global sustainability is a priority at Delta. As part of this commitment we have one of the few products made from recycled polyester. We are committed to…

• Bloom (8%) Launches Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange

  Jeff Mohn

  6 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  We are proud to announce the launch of the Bloom (8%) Affiliate Program On PepperJam Exchange www.PepperJam.com Join this program NOW! About the Bloom Affiliate Program:   Women helping women…that’s really the core of Bloom.com — a social beauty store that’s revolutionizing the way you buy beauty products. They personalize your shopping experience with relevant Best4You recommendations based on unbiased feedback from thousands of women who are your beauty matches. Each purchase comes with a free, customized BloomBonus gift filled with luxurious products tailored…

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  search engine marketing - Google Blog Search

• A good option to purchase search engine marketing in baton rouge ...

  SamanthaGorukr

  28 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Any person today who needs to find one thing online makes use of search engines like google, to boost the actual strikes if the site and therefore improve your.

• Reasonably priced Search engine marketing Services- What Can ...

  Admin1

  28 Jan 2012 | 4:16 am

  When you have a site, it is actually time to use Search engine marketing on it. Seo, which stands for seo, gives your site an edge over other people by “optimizing” it which will convince search engines to place it within a

• Earn Big Profits With a Good Search Engine Marketing Company

  Kurt Tasche

  28 Jan 2012 | 3:41 am

  Internet technology has made major changes in almost all aspects of our lives,including sales and marketing. Marketing of products has gradually shifted from traditional to e-commerce. With the wide reach of internet, most

• Diy Search Engine Marketing

  Sadia

  28 Jan 2012 | 12:51 am

  But how many people have a clue about search engine marketing? No matter what kind of website you own – whether it be e-commerce or just a personal blog – you can count yourself a nobody if you don't have search

• Can You Get IT Consulting Leads Through Telemarketing? | Search ...

  admin

  28 Jan 2012 | 12:33 am

  Search Engine Marketing Service. # 1 for Blog Marketing Tips. Search Engine Marketing Service · Home · About · Search Engine Marketing Service · Small Biz Marketing · Blog Library · Local search · Ezine Directory · Web

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  Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

• Two Weeks In, Google Says “Search Plus Your World” Going Well, Critics Should Give It Time

  Danny Sullivan

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:11 pm

  Two weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World. Since then, Google has faced strong criticisms that SPYW is making its search relevancy worse and favoring its Google+ social network too much. Not so, says Google search chief Amit Singhal. Most Google users are happy, Singhal said. Of course,... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

• Bing Out Of “Betaphase” In Germany, Claims 10 Million Users

  Greg Sterling

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:27 pm

  Bing is reportedly now out of betaphase in Deutschland. According to Microsoft, Bing has 10 million users or 20 percent of active internet users in Germany: Mittlerweile benutzen fast 10 Millionen Nutzer in Deutschland regelmäßig Bing, das sind 20 Prozent der aktiven Internetnutzer hierzulande.... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

• SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 27, 2012

  Matt McGee

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:58 pm

  Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search In Pics: David Beckham At Google, Google’s Moscow Office & Bing Bar In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

• Mobile Search: The Agency Opportunity – SMN Tuesday, Jan. 31

  Claire Schoen

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:57 pm

  Search Marketing Now will present “Mobile Search: The Agency Opportunity,” on Tuesday, January 31 at 1 PM EST. The free webcast features Steven Schuler and Patrick Peters, both from Yahoo!’s mobile division. They’ll give an overview of the current mobile landscape, then... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

• Search In Pics: David Beckham At Google, Google’s Moscow Office & Bing Bar

  Barry Schwartz

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:14 am

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. David Beckham At Google: Google’s Moscow Brick Desk: Bing Bar at... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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  Search Engine Journal

• Tips on How to Help Uninteresting Pages Rank Better

  Melissa Fach

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  The following video was done by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. He has some fantastic tips on how you can help the boring pages of your site rank better. Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournalFollow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

• Industry Discussion: The True Nature of Social Media ROI

  Martin Solar

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:04 pm

  There is a common misconception about the return on investment (ROI) via social media. For reasons most of us do not understand, Social Media has been classified primarily as a marketing tool by many. Because of this misconception at the foundation of a social media strategy, calculating actual ROI can be a circuitous and inexact [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

• Want More Clicks on Twitter?

  Melissa Fach

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  The following infographic is by Dan Zarrella of HubSpot. This IG a lot of great recommendations if you are looking to increase your clicks on Twitter. I especially liked the suggestions on using words correctly and the use of action words. I guess I will be tweeting more on the weekends too. To find out [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

• Top 10 Reasons Your Facebook Campaign Isn’t Working

  Sujan Patel

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  To most PPC marketers, the Facebook paid ads program represents an ideal marketing opportunity. Finally, you aren’t limited to targeting your ads based on geographic location and time of day alone (I’m looking at you, Google Adwords!). In fact, if you wanted to run a campaign targeting 16 year old boys in San Francisco who [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

• Google Plus Promotes Network and New Security Features to Young Teens and Parents

  David Angotti

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  On Thursday afternoon, Google+ announced that the rapidly growing social network is now available to teens ages 13 and up. Although minors can sign up for and use Google+, the social network also introduced new privacy and security changes designed to protect underage users. Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of products, said the following of the [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

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  Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips

• Yahoo Shutters 10 Mobile Apps

  Matt McGee

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:12 pm

  It’s not just Google closing products these days. Yahoo announced today that it’s shutting down a full 10 of its mobile apps across both the iOS and Android platforms. The list of Yahoo mobile apps being shut down is as follows: Yahoo Meme (iPad and iPhone) Yahoo Mim (iPad) Yahoo... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

• Facebook IPO Documents Coming Next Week — Report

  Greg Sterling

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:01 pm

  According to the Wall Street Journal, next week Facebook will file its “S-1″ and related documents in preparation for an IPO that could raise a whopping $10 billion and would potentially value the company at $100 billion. As the WSJ reports, the mega-offering would vault Facebook into... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

• Marketing Day: January 27, 2012

  Matt McGee

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:01 pm

  Here’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: Infographic: Most Popular Conversion Tests Are you testing different things on your web site? Changing up your landing page copy, your... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

• Mobile Search: The Agency Opportunity – SMN Tuesday, Jan. 31

  Claire Schoen

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm

  Search Marketing Now will present “Mobile Search: The Agency Opportunity,” on Tuesday, January 31 at 1 PM EST. The free webcast features Steven Schuler and Patrick Peters, both from Yahoo!’s mobile division. They’ll give an overview of the current mobile landscape, then... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

• Infographic: Most Popular Conversion Tests

  Marketing Land Infographics

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:59 pm

  Are you testing different things on your web site? Changing up your landing page copy, your navigation and other elements can lead to better conversion. The people at Monetate have assembled an infographic looking at the frequency of testing and types of testing that are conducted. The second part... Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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  Internet Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

• Yahoo Sends “Feel Good” Email to Employees

  admin

  28 Jan 2012 | 9:51 am

  On Thursday, Yahoo’s Chief Executive Jerry Yang attempted to send a clear, feel good e-mail message to employees telling them that the Internet company is indeed executing well its strategic plan to strengthen its “leadership position” in online advertising. Yang also wanted the employees to put aside “the rumors and speculation” and remain focused on the company’s business. “Yahoo is a great company with a truly unique set of highly-valuable assets that is growing, profitable and executing well on its strategic plan to enhance our leadership position…

• Yang Returns to Work Monday Morning

  admin

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:52 pm

  How excited would you be to return back to work today on this beautiful monday morning? If your name is Jerry Yang, I think you stop and think about this question for a few minutes. The skies may look great outside, but what is the weather like inside Yahoo? More specifically, how do Yahoo shareholders feel today? Many are probably thinking about what has transpired over the weekend concerning the meeting between Yang and Ballmer. They are thinking about the Microsoft offer withdraw letter. They are also wondering if the Yahoo co-founder made the right decision according to what is important…

• Yahoo Is Undesireable for Microsoft Goals

  admin

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:52 am

  “Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.” The news arrived via press release saturday evening that Microsoft and company are through with making any more extended efforts to Yahoo and company. I have posted the letter so that you may read it for yourself and draw your own personalized conclusions from what is said in it. One of the feelings that can be taken away from this whole situation is that Yang feels that it would not be in the shareholders best interest…

• Tips for Effective Website Link Building

  admin

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Web linking is one of the most effective search engine optimization techniques. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important because it increases your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) of major search engines, leading to increased visibility. This visibility means greater hits and consequently greater ROI or return on investment. There are several tips that will ensure that your website linking is effective. These include: Create quality content – some of the most effective links are contextual links. These include links in blog comments and links in press releases. The…

• Microsoft Letter to Yahoo

  admin

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:51 pm

  May 3, 2008 Mr. Jerry Yang CEO and Chief Yahoo Yahoo! Inc. 701 First Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94089 Dear Jerry: After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly…

• 

  Search Engine Watch - Latest

• Google Maps Adds Emergency Alerts

  John Rampton

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  If a major storm is headed you way, Google wants to be your information guide. The Google Crisis Response team is looking to be your go to information source on when a storm will strike, how bad will it be, and what resources are available to help.

• Con Artist Shares Inside Story of Google Pharmacy Ad Sting

  Miranda Miller

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, career con man David Whitaker spilled the beans on his experience as undercover operative Jason Corriente, an agent for wealthy clients seeking online ads. The sting led to a $500 million forfeiture for Google.

• Measuring ROI: How to Collect Meaningful PPC Conversion Data

  John Lynch

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Learn how you can track and collect significant conversion data and then bring it all together in one dashboard. Use these three levels of conversion data tracking that vary in terms of pros/cons, costs, effectiveness, and sophistication.

• SEO Chicks Competition - Win a ticket to SES London!

  Laura Roth

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  SEO Chicks have launched a competition for the next generation of search marketers. Have you been in SEO less than a year or have a desire to join the industry? If so, this is the competition for you. Here is your chance to win a ticket to SES London

• 7 Steps to Prepare For the Search Alliance in the UK

  Duncan Parry

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  After a year’s delay, Microsoft adCenter will start to power the PPC results on Yahoo UK in Q2 of 2012. Discussion of its potential for success aside, here are some useful links and an action plan for preparing UK paid search campaigns.

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  The Search Agents

• How a Twitter Drama Unfolded and What We Can Learn From It

  David Carrillo

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:19 pm

  Around 11:15 AM PST, Carri Bella (@carribella) tweeted the following: I see @Hubspot has “Killer Facebook Ads” eBook, but that’s the same title of actual book by @aimclear. Hubspot should change theirs. — Carri Bella (@CarriBella) January 27, 2012 And then something interesting happened. Marty Weintraub (@aimclear) and Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) began a very heated—and public—argument. Weintraub began by asking his followers to retweet this message: Please RT Friends Dear @hubspot, you name your eBook “How to Create Killer Facebook Ads,” when my book is…

• The Week We Searched For – January 27, 2012

  Camille Canon

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:41 pm

  Google’s new privacy policy could spark probe from FTC- Google announced its new privacy policy on Monday, which allows the company to gather and store user information across all its services — Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Docs, etc.  According to Google, the new policy will better enable them to “maintain, protect and improve” its user services as well as improve the quality and relevance of its search ads.  The new policy will come into effect across all of Google’s services on March 1, 2012.  Members of Congress have already filed a complaint with the FTC questioning whether…

• Is Google Buying AND SELLING Links?

  SEO Lamp

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:03 pm

  First, the Buying At the beginning of this year, Aaron Wall from SEO Book discovered that Google, or someone working on behalf of the Google Chrome account, paid bloggers to mention and link to the Google Chrome landing page. The Google webspam team eventually penalized this activity by manually demoting the Google Chrome landing page for 60 days in the SERPs as well as saying they’d lower the PageRank of the page. In the end Google said they never intended the paid links to be a part of their Google Chrome video promotion activity and blamed Unruly Media who conducted the campaign, but…

• Google takes some heat over Google+

  Camille Canon

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:53 pm

  It seems like we can’t make it through a week in January without Google sparking controversy over its social network Google+. With the network’s introduction of a new user pseudonym policy and an automatic opt-in for all new Gmail accounts this week, it looks like the debates around Google+, privacy, and the integrity of Google’s search results are just getting started. We kicked off the New Year with Google’s rollout of “Search Plus Your World,” a new system that strives to make search results more relevant and personalized by integrating Google’s social search,…

• Kid-Friendly Social Media – Friend or Foe?

  Mary Hayes

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:34 am

  An increasing number of parents are concerned about the effects of social media on their children, and rightfully so. Since the advent of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, the term “cyber bullying” has fast become part of the American lexicon. Unfortunately despite the many positive attributes social media has brought to communication, social networking has made it easier for unsuspecting children and teens to become victims of sexual predators or identity theft. Although Facebook features privacy settings, a Family Safety Center, and requires its users to be at least 13…

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  eMarketer Articles and Blog Posts

• Article: One Size Does Not Fit All for Lonely Planet's Social Media Content

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

• Blog: January 27, 2012: eMarketer in the News

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

  Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured during the past week or so: The New York Times – Yahoo’s Income Drops 5% [...]

• Article: Free Apps Win Out Over Paid Downloads

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

  In 2011, 96% of smartphone apps were downloaded for free

• Article: Social Sign-On Is Consumers’ Choice

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

  Most have used false info rather than fill out more forms

• Article: US Mobile Ad Spending Soars Past Expectations

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:01 pm

  Advertisers will spend $2.61 billion on mobile this year

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  Posts about Search Marketing - Organic/Natural (SEO) from the Econsultancy blog

• Techmeme: this is what happens when aggregators aggregate aggregators

  Patricio Robles

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:03 pm

  For many in the tech community, Techmeme is one of the top places to turn when you want to discover the latest news. Launched in 2005, Techmeme was at first automated, but since 2008, it has employed human editors to curate the best tech news on the web. The idea: human involvement is necessary to filter the wheat from the chaff. Which seems like a good idea given just how much chaff there is on the web. But is it working for Techmeme?Recently, former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy launched a new blog, PandoDaily. She raised money from a cadre of some of Silicon Valley's most influential…

• New Google privacy policy shares user data across multiple products

  David Moth

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:28 am

  Google has consolidated its privacy policies so that data held in separate product accounts will now be merged into one. It means that when signed in, a user’s data will be shared across Gmail, YouTube, Google+, Maps and search.More than 60 documents will be consolidated into one main privacy policy, which will be rolled out to all users on March 1st. A blog post announcing the change said Google will “treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” In practice it says this will mean users get better search…

• Google Offer Extensions: an online impact on footfall

  Serena Wong

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:52 am

  In the current economic climate, with an increase in struggling high street sales, we have witnessed the rise of affiliate programmes and coupon platforms. Last year Google stepped into the arena with Google Offers (in beta), and has now furthered its stake in the offers race with Google Offer Extensions.  Offer Extensions allow advertisers to create an additional link on their paid search adverts. This link then delivers an offer that can be redeemed in two forms: online or offline. Online Redemption By clicking on the ‘view offer’ link, a potential customer…

• Facebook, Twitter, MySpace chide Google

  Patricio Robles

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:32 pm

  Some of the social networking companies feeling left out after Google's Search, plus Your World launch may very well complain to regulators already gunning for Google, but they're not going to wait for Washington D.C. or Brussels to tell Google how to manage its SERPs. Instead, engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace took matters into their own hands with focusontheuser.org and developed a bookmarklet for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that adds a "don't be evil" button to the browser.When performing a Google search, that button can be clicked to reveal what the "most relevant results" are --…

• Google experimenting with new signup form

  Patricio Robles

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pm

  Google may be best-known as a search engine, but with more than 350m people actively using its Gmail service and more than 90m registered users on its Google+ social network, it's clear that Google isn't just a search engine. Increasingly, that's creating some tension as the Mountain View-based company uses search to promote its other offerings. Now, it appears that Google has turned to its signup form in its effort to boost usage of those offerings.As reported by Alex Chitu at the Google Operating System blog, which is not affiliated with Google, it appears Google is testing a new version of…

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  SMS

• Five For Friday – January 23-27, 2012

  Frances Mary Krug

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:21 am

  Here are five of the most newsworthy items for this week: 1. So Are Google Results Crap, Or Aren’t They? — There has been a lot of discussion lately re: Google’s increasingly complicated search results, and the addition of Google Plus is only making the view murkier. Andrew Goodman of Traffick has a nice opinion piece on the debate. 2.  10 Form Optimization Tips — Over at Search Engine Land, Mona Elesseily nicely lays out 10 optimization tactics for online forms. As a heads-up, Kim Krause-Berg will be contributing an article on form optimization for the Spring issue…

• Good SEO Requires Good Content

  Nick Stamoulis

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:44 am

  If I had to pick one of the most important indicators of a successful SEO campaign, if not THE most important factor, it would be content. Without quality content that will engage potential clients and customers, there is nothing worth optimizing because website visitors will never have any reason to take any kind of action or convert. There are two kinds of content that are important for SEO purposes. First is the content on the actual website. The search engines want to provide users with the best possible search experience by providing them with search results that will satisfy their need.

• The Skinny On Google’s Advertising Revenues For 2011

  SMS Staff

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:37 pm

  Google had revenues of $37.9 billion in 2011. Of that total, almost all (96%) came from advertising revenues. The following infographic from WordStream (thanks to Wordstream for preparing this!) breaks that number down into the top 10 industries that provided Google with 60% of that ad revenue. It further identifies the top five brand names in each of the 10 categories and gives examples of popular keyword searches and the cost per click for those words/phrases. Take a look for some very intriguing hard data on actual spending on online advertising and scope out where the industry your…

• Five For Friday – January 16-20, 2012

  Frances Mary Krug

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:12 pm

  This week’s top five news/opinion items are: 1.  Yahoo’s Jerry Yang Resigns — although he left as CEO in 2008, Jerry’s Yang’s announces that he is leaving the company that he co-founded and resigning from the Board of Directors. The end of an era – which many see as an opportunity for Yahoo to reinvent itself and move forward with plans for Asian properties. 2.  The End of Link Building As We’ve Known And Loved It — with authority signals used by Google to rank websites shifting from the time-honored standard link to focus on social signals,…

• What’s SOPA All About?

  Frances Mary Krug

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pm

  Now that the blackouts are over for the time being on the Internet, it’s a good time to reflect a bit on what the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is all about. This infographic from BusinessInsurance.org lays it out in an easily understood format, making it clear what the implications might be for your online business. Via: Business Insurance Blog Subscribe Now and Save 31% | Search Marketing Standard Magazine

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  John W. Ellis

• Google Privacy Changes: For the better?

  John W Ellis

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:59 am

  Google announced a new update to its privacy policy recently that may (or may not) be an improvement. The new change “allows” Google to combine our information and history across one large channel, effective March 1. Google’s new policy combines 60 different policies across multiple Google avenues into one main privacy policy. To the average user this means, instead of signing-up and agreeing to the various terms for different products (Calendar, YouTube, Gmail, etc.), users just have sign-up with “Google” as a whole. As they often do Google created a meaningless, but fun video to…

• AdWords Ad Extensions

  John W Ellis

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:59 am

  Over the past two years, I have been a big fan of what Google has done with AdWords Ad Extensions. These extensions allow advertisers to expand the standard text ad with additional lines and details. Google Adwords Ad Extensions help searchers learn even more about product details and services. There is not an additional charge to create these ad extensions, except for the standard click rate that the ad generates. In some cases, there is very little charge at all, if any. Over the next few weeks, I will dive into each Google AdWords Ad Extensions in more detail. In the meantime, here is a…

• Google Plus My World

  John W Ellis

  10 Jan 2012 | 2:23 pm

  Today, Google announced a major change to search engine results. This is probably one of the most significant changes I’ve seen to Google in quite a while. The new “Search Plus Your World” features begin rolling out immediately. The idea behind this new feature integrates traditional search results with shared items from a user’s network of friends. Google’s new “Search Plus Your World will have a new “Personal Results” view that will show to users by default. These “personal results” will be tailored results based on Google+ shared content, personal web history, online…

• Facebook Advertising – Body Copy

  John W Ellis

  1 Jan 2012 | 10:51 pm

  As we discussed in the prior post on Facebook advertising, an ad starts with a great image. After the user’s attention is grabbed it’s essential to follow-through with proper copy. The best Facebook ads consist of three important areas: Action, Offer, and User Benefits. Below I will cover these in more detail. 1. Action – Each ad needs a call-to-action. The call-to-action can be established with one question: What do you want to the user to do? Some examples include: “Reserve a Ticket”, “Watch this video”, “Join”, “Download”, and many more. The action of the user is the…

• Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

  John W Ellis

  11 Dec 2011 | 10:50 pm

  We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun: Dear Editor— I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Virginia O’Hanlon 115 West Ninety-Fifth Street VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that…

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  Search Engine Marketing Blog - KoMarketing Associates

• Google Privacy Policy Fine Print: Why They Really Want Your Mobile Number

  Steven Wells

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:44 pm

  Google’s March 1st Terms Associate Mobile Number and Profile Account Google announced yesterday that their privacy policies and terms of service would be altered as of March 1, 2012. There have been many articles on this topic, but I’d like to look at the issues surrounding the mobile relationship in this new policy. With these changes, specifically ones relating to mobile devices, I wanted to dig deeper into what was actually happening. Being from the search and business development world for 10+ years, I’m often curious and sometimes skeptical on rolling changes to an existing privacy…

• How to Verify Your Google+ Page for Business

  Derek Edmond

  20 Jan 2012 | 8:51 am

  There are two key obstacles that may prevent B2B marketers from moving forward with a Google+ Page for Business. Towards the end of last year, Google removed one of those obstacles, the ability to add multiple administrators to the company’s Google+ Page(s) for Business. The second, less distinct, but slightly more complicated obstacle (at least in initial perception), is the ability to verify authenticity of a Google+ Page for Business. For example, while anyone could create a page about KoMarketing Associates (potential online reputation nightmare?), only site administrators can…

• How To Add Multiple Administrators to a Google+ Page for Business

  Derek Edmond

  9 Jan 2012 | 10:11 am

  Towards the end of last year, Google announced a series of enhancements to their Google+ Pages for Business product. For B2B marketers, the most important addition was the ability to delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a page. While Google posted a video that highlighting instructions on how to do this, here are a few screenshots and step by step instructions for adding an additional administrator to a Google+ Page for Business. Step 1: Google+ Settings The originator of the Google+ Page for Business needs to navigate to and select the “Google+ Settings” option,…

• Company News: The 2012 Kickoff

  Katie Meurin

  6 Jan 2012 | 10:33 am

  Back in September, we were able to share some exciting news about our clients’ success, KoMarketing growth, and the addition of a new managing partner, Steven Wells. Since Wells’ arrival with the company, we have increased our team with four new full time employees. Our fresh faces include Tammy Byars, a SEO/SMO analyst with a special flair for Facebook; Mike Piccowitz, who specializes in PPC advertising; and two new marketing copywriters – Rachel Veznaian and Ryan Young. For a few weeks, our quaint office was becoming a bit squished… but we were able to bring in some sweet new…

• Why a Mobile Marketing Strategy Needs to be on the B2B Marketer’s Mind

  Derek Edmond

  5 Jan 2012 | 8:13 am

  In my most recent Search Engine Land column, I wrote about important search engine marketing resolutions for 2012. While the majority of these resolutions might seem commonplace to many of our current clients (sorry for the constant repetition), the last resolution is something the data from web traffic reports has led our organization to embrace with even greater urgency: starting to take mobile seriously. Here is the growth in mobile device usage across a select group of client sites, comparing the two most recent six month periods (December 2010 through May 2011 and June 2011 through…

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  The Search Engine Marketing Blog @ MoreVisibility

• Increase Awareness of Your Products and Services with Google Interest Categories

  Anne Garcia

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:12 am

  Google AdWords Interest categories allow advertisers to reach targeted audiences across the Google Display Network by allowing advertisers to choose from a list of categories – from Yoga & Pilates to Sports Memorabilia or Vehicle Shopping – and Google will show ads to people who are interested in those categories. Users are targeted for interest categories [...]

• Are you mobilized

  German Parra

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:03 am

  If you follow the trends of digital marketing you know that targeting mobile devices is really hot at the moment. Everybody talks about mobile campaigns and how fast mobile is growing. For these same reasons, I will show you a practical approach to mobile marketing or as I like to call it – to get [...]

• Use Product Listing Ads to Promote Your Product Inventory

  Anne Garcia

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  A Product Listing Ad is a paid search ad that includes richer product information like a product image, price and merchant name. These ads do not require additional keywords or ad text and they appear whenever a user enters a search query relevant to a product in your Google Merchant Center account. Google will automatically [...]

• Google Made Changes to Their Geo-Target Settings

  Katherine Bennett

  17 Jan 2012 | 9:21 am

  The world of search engine marketing is constantly changing and it is up to businesses as well as advertisers to keep pace. Google recently modified their campaign geo–target settings, which should gives advertisers a little more leverage. The new geo-target settings are more informative, in regard to showing how many people can be reached. For example [...]

• Use Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer to Increase Conversions and Decrease Cost Per Conversion

  Anne Garcia

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:43 am

  Are you interested in increasing the number of conversions on your site as well as decreasing your cost per conversion (also known as cost per acquisition or CPA) for your Google AdWords campaigns? If so, Conversion Optimizer is the solution for your Google AdWords campaigns. Google says that on average, campaigns that adopt Conversion Optimizer achieve [...]

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  SEM CLUBHOUSE

• Understanding Robots.txt

  Christine Churchill

  9 Jan 2012 | 5:52 pm

  Robots.txt Basics One of the most over-looked items related to your web site is a small unassuming text file called the robots.txt file. This simple text file has the important job of telling web crawlers (including search engine spiders) which files the web robots can access on your site. Also known as “A Standard for Robot Exclusion”, the robots.txt file gives the site owner to ability to request that spiders not access certain areas of the site. The problem arises when webmasters accidentally block more than they intend. At least once a year I get a call from some frantic site…

• Great Site For Sharing Infographics: Visual.ly

  Chris Silver Smith

  12 Dec 2011 | 11:26 am

  I recently highlighted how social media newcomer Pinterest is good for SEO, and it’s useful for local SEO as well. Another relative newcomer worth looking to for optimizing infographics is Visual.ly. Check out how Visual.ly has grown content in the last few months: Visual.ly's content has grown to over 5,000 images in just a few months. Their growth in numbers of fans on Facebook has been really good, too: Visual.ly hasn’t grown search market share at the skyrocketing rate we’ve seen with Pinterest, but it has grown enough to be interesting and worthwhile for promotion…

• Pinterest Gaining Traction For External SEO

  Chris Silver Smith

  14 Nov 2011 | 12:37 pm

  Pinterest appears to be gaining traction really quickly right now. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a image sharing site which provides theme based “image boards” which people can “pin” items to (think of the old cork bulletin boards people hang on walls and pin photos and pieces of paper to). It seems unusual to see a new image-sharing type of social media site to be gaining so much ground, and so quickly. This could be happening due to beneficial attention from influential people who may be serving as “mavens” as Malcolm Gladwell describes…

• Save The Date: Google’s Juiced-Up Freshness In Rankings Underscore Dates, Too

  Chris Silver Smith

  7 Nov 2011 | 7:03 am

  Last week’s announcement that Google has tweaked algorithms to rank fresher content higher in many cases (purportedly 35%! more often) isn’t a complete surprise for those who follow SEM Clubhouse. I previously wrote some on how Google may rank pages with dates higher and many of us in the SEO field have already known that freshness is an important factor for blog posts, news articles, and some other types of content such as images. But this current announcement indicates that the search engine views recency to be more important for a wider variety of content and topics than it was…

• The Day We Closed Google: An Illustration Of The Problem With Crowd Sourced Edits

  Chris Silver Smith

  19 Oct 2011 | 8:31 am

  An interesting new Google Maps interface was found this past week by Daniel Hollerung, and after he tweeted Mike Blumenthal and I about it, Google Places confirmed it was an interface they are testing for verifying map accuracy. I’ve replicated an example of the interface using the listing for my friends over at Search Influence: While this particular Google Places information accuracy widget is new, Google has long been leveraging similar user-generated content to try to enhance and grow map information. They have been actively crowd-sourcing map accuracy work for a while now, but…

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  Fast Blog Finder

• How to Get FANTASTIC Results Using Custom Footprints in Fast Blog Finder

  Julia

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:33 am

  How to Get FANTASTIC Results Using Custom Footprints in Fast Blog Finder By default Fast Blog Finder searches for blogs using footprints programmed inside the program. In the version 3.2 we added the ability to use custom footprints instead of the default ones. This little yet very powerful feature makes your search potential almost UNLIMITED. Read more on How to Get FANTASTIC Results Using Custom Footprints in Fast Blog Finder… Tags: custom footprints, fast blog finder Fast Blog Finder - The Art of Blog Commenting

• 5 SEO Tips for Massive Website Traffic

  Julia

  21 Nov 2011 | 4:13 am

  5 SEO Tips for Massive Website Traffic If you see a decrease in human traffic to your website, it's most likely because your site lost its position on the first page in search engine results. It's time to sit and think how you could improve the situation. Below I share with you 5 obvious but sometimes overlooked tips to master your website search engine optimization: Read more on 5 SEO Tips for Massive Website Traffic… Tags: search engine optimization Fast Blog Finder - The Art of Blog Commenting

• 5 Most Strong SEO Misbelieves Disclosed

  Julia

  16 Nov 2011 | 6:48 am

  5 Most Strong SEO Misbelieves Disclosed So many sites provide so much information about search engine optimization, so it's sometimes difficult to understand what to do and what not to do to optimize your website for search engines. You can really be stuck if you are new to SEO. I'm going to help you put your knowledge in order by telling you about the most common SEO myths and giving some useful tips as one goes. Read more on 5 Most Strong SEO Misbelieves Disclosed… Tags: Link Building, search engine optimization, seo, seo tactics Fast Blog Finder - The Art of Blog Commenting

• 4 Tips for Recruiting Multiple Writers to Build Your Blog

  admin

  8 Nov 2011 | 4:05 am

  4 Tips for Recruiting Multiple Writers to Build Your Blog If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve probably realized how time-consuming the whole process can be. Taking your blog to the next step involves coming up with fresh content using various different perspectives, a feat that often cannot be simply accomplished on your own. Recruiting several regular contributors is a great way to push your blog from a personal pet project to a something that can create money, recognition, or both. Here are a few ideas for finding additional bloggers to contribute to your blog: 1. First…

• Take Directory Submission to a Higher Level

  admin

  9 Sep 2011 | 8:09 am

  Take Directory Submission to a Higher Level Blog commenting and directory submission are the simplest ways to get search engine friendly links to your website that help your site rank high in SERP. But blog commenting and directory submission are very time consuming if you don't use the right tools. Now you can submit your website to directories in the easiest and fastest way — using Fast Directory Submitter. Read more on Take Directory Submission to a Higher Level… Fast Blog Finder - The Art of Blog Commenting

• 

  The Invesp Blog: E-commerce and Landing page Optimization

• Social Networking Statistics and Trends [Infographic]

  khalid

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:04 am

  Check our Infographic “Social Networking Statistics and Trends” to understand how social networking grew in 2011. How much time social networking users spent on social media sites? Which countries have to most active social networking users? What were the most shared social media stories of 2011 and Lot more. Infographic by- Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp   To Publish this Image on your Blog or Website . Copy this code Infographic by – Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp There are more than 1.2 Billion Social Networking users in the World. 82% of…

• Webinar: Preparing Your Website For The Holiday Rush

  khalid

  25 Oct 2011 | 4:16 pm

  Note: If you attend our webinars, you know that seating runs out very quick. We will limit registration to the first 100 participants. Register for our upcoming  CRO webinar: Preparing Your Website For The Holiday Rush. Date: Thursday, November 11th, 2011 Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT The holiday season in 2011 is going to be challenging. Customers are worried about buying items in uncertain economy. This webinar will discuss: How do you prepare your website to covert more of your visitors into customers? How do you use incentives correctly on the site? Limited Seating. We can only…

• Ecommerce Research: Optimizing Product Pages

  khalid

  19 Sep 2011 | 12:57 pm

  Register for our upcoming ecommerce conversion optimization webinar: Optimizing Product Pages. Date: Thursday, October 6, 2011 Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT Whether your company offers 10 or 10,000 products online, the product page must persuade visitors to click on the add to cart button. Discover: How do you measure the effectiveness of your product pages? What does analytics tell you about your product pages? How to utilize incentives on product pages? Do social media icons help conversions on a product page? What are some of the winning product page designs? *** PLUS: Live…

• How Big is Blogosphere [Infographic]

  khalid

  12 Sep 2011 | 12:20 pm

  The Blogosphere is growing at rapid pace. Blogging these days is not just about sharing content. Its much more than that. Its about Analytics, trends, social networking traffic, revenues and lot more. Our infographic “How Big is Blogosphere” will be covering some interesting facts about Blogging World. Infographic by- Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp   To Publish this Image on your Blog or Website . Copy this code Infographic by – Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp Did You Know That According to BlogPulse, there were more than 164 Million Blogs in…

• How Big Is E-commerce Industry

  khalid

  18 Jul 2011 | 1:46 pm

  The e-commerce sector has continued its double-digit growth year over year. And to make it easy for you to understand the growth of e-commerce industry in US and all across the world. We’ve created an infographic “How big is E-commerce” that will cover some interesting facts about the E-commerce industry, its growth and latest trends. Infographic by- Conversion Optimization Company Invesp   To Publish this Image on your Blog or Website . Copy this code Infographic by – Conversion Optimization Company Invesp Did You Know That In 1979 – Michael Aldrich…

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  eBay, ecommerce, life

• Amazon: Are we creating a monster?

  trevor

  14 Jan 2012 | 3:29 pm

  This 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…

• Interview with Angela Thompson from Collectmyparcel.com

  trevor

  29 Dec 2011 | 2:25 pm

  Sending items by courier is essential for online retailers, but companies with low volumes cannot access good prices.  Aggregators are one way to get better prices.  I caught up with Angela Thompson, Managing Director of collectmyparcel.com to find out more. Who are you! Put simply collectmyparcel.com is an internet-based parcel booking service. Customers can book collections fromUK addresses and send to just about anywhere in the world. We act as a middleman between the customer and the big name couriers such as Parcelforce, City Link, Yodel and DHL. We can also help customers with larger…

• How to find interns

  trevor

  24 Dec 2011 | 2:42 pm

  We have been hosting European interns for the last few months and have found them a great asset to the business.  Here is a summary of what we have learned so far. UK vs. European interns We have had UK interns and we have had interns from the EU.  Sorry, fellow countrymen, but give me one of our continental brothers or sisters any day, they are much more committed.  I think it is for the following reasons: Many business students in Europe have to do one or more internships in order to pass their degree.  If they don’t finish the internship, they won’t pass As they are…

• The problem with being an entrepreneur

  trevor

  27 Nov 2011 | 2:31 pm

  Following on from Matt Ogborne’s article on being an entrepreneur, I though I would give my own thoughts on the trials of entrepreneurship.  The benefits are well documented, but what are the pitfalls? Constant mild state of agitation with everything Entrepreneurs are by their very nature people who like to get things done and challenge the status quo.  I find it very difficult to cope with people who are doing a crap job (i.e. not getting thing done) or talking rubbish.  I think that Mat’s example of the checkout girl is a good one, if you are running your own business you…

• In praise of an early start

  trevor

  22 Nov 2011 | 2:35 pm

  One of the interesting things which was said about Steve Jobs was that he wanted products to be perfect before launching them.  A worthy sentiment no doubt, but it made me realise that I have taken a rather different approach.  I have favoured starting small and using an iterative approach to developing a business.  This approach has the following advantages: Get to market quickly Low start up costs Learn quickly from (the inevitable) mistakes Trying to get things perfect, not only costs more money, but is also a perfect excuse for inaction.  My regret looking back is not starting…

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  ReelSEO Online Video Marketing Digest

• Revision3 Saw Major Increase In Viewership, Revenue In 2011

  Chris Atkinson

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:24 pm

  Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback took to the Rev3 blog this morning and announced a 359% increase in total views and a 53% increase in revenue for the year of 2011.  Revision3 made smart acquisitions last year, including the extraordinarily successful Epic Meal Time, and by the end of the year, picked up one of YouTube's all-time hits, The Philip DeFranco Show, which should make 2012 even better.  Rev3 also increased its YouTube subscribers across all shows to 4.5 million.  In addition to the audience and revenue, Rev3 is proud of their technological advancements over the year. Revision3 Saw…

• Android Video Viewing Gaining On iOS Devices

  Christophor Rick

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Encoding.com just released new numbers pulled from Vid.ly which show that Android is gaining on iOS in terms of video viewing. It's no surprise as the operating system has been steadily stealing market share quarter after quarter and is available on far more different devices than iOS. Since Vid.ly is a universal URL for videos and does browser and device detection, it knows exactly what it's streaming that video to. That means all they need to do is keep track of the operating system on the device and they know who's watching what. But not in the creepy Big Brother sort of way, or at least,…

• Google Plus Opens To Teens Age 13 & Up

  Jeremy Scott

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:50 am

  Google Plus continues to get more open bit by bit, and just today made the service available to teens age 13 and up. Previously, Google Plus was restricted to people 18 and up. Along with the wave of new teenagers, Google Plus is also getting new privacy and security features--a fairly important thing if the service is to become something parents encourage their children to use. Google is probably doing the slow rollout on purpose. This is their third or fourth wave of opening the service up. Each time it's followed by new statistics on membership, and this time will be no different. Millions…

• 20th Century Fox Gets YouTube Stars To Promote "Chronicle"

  Chris Atkinson

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:20 am

  20th Century Fox has teamed with Big Frame, a YouTube talent company, to produce videos promoting their new movie Chronicle opening on February 3.  And Chronicle is the perfect type of movie to get some YouTube promotion, as it is one of the latest films to use this-is-really-happening video, "found footage," very much like Cloverfield did a few years ago by adding crazy special effects.  Big Frame got YouTube stars DeStorm, MrDeshawnRaw, and Mystery Guitar Man in on the act, a subscriber base of more than 3.5 million. More Great Creative Advertising From 20th Century Fox Fox was behind…

• The Week's Best Viral Videos & Video Marketing Lessons - Singing Obama Edition

  Jeremy Scott

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:10 am

  After YouTube's latest updates yesterday to the Browse page, many of you probably spent some time casually playing around with it to see what's new. If you did, you might have come across some of the selections in this week's round up of the best viral videos. Most are probably worth watching again, but I'm sure we've got a few you haven't seen as well. So grab your coffee, put on your headphones, and start your Friday off right with some outstanding viral videos. Artists Question: What happens when you cross Bon Jovi with hot musical act, Bon Iver? Answer: A hot viral video to launch a new…

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  HigherVisibility

• Twitter Beginning To Censor Tweets?

  K. Sloan

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:52 am

  People tweet for many reasons. For some it is truly a social tool while many business owners tweet to communicate with their customers. This week Twitter announced it would withhold content from users in a specific country if that tweet violates law or if they have “different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression.” The example Twitter officials gave on their blog is a law that prohibits pro-Nazi sentiments in countries such as France and Germany.One of the most interesting points Twitter made in their blog is that they have been restricting tweets all along. The difference now…

• Stay inside the Lines: Understanding the Many Google SEO Penalties

  Amanda DiSilvestro

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:02 am

  If you were going to color a picture, you could do one of two things. First, you could color outside the lines, be a rebel, and get your picture done in half the time. You don’t like the lines anyways. You wish they weren’t there, so you decide to just ignore them. Second, you could color inside the lines and take your time. It would take you longer and it would be a little bit more difficult, but in the end your picture would look much nicer. Why? Because you stayed inside the lines, despite your hatred for them being there in the first place.On a less childish note, you probably caught…

• How to Make Google Results More Relevant

  K. Sloan

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:18 am

  A team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are fighting back against Google’s new “Search Your World” which puts relevant results from a user’s Google + account and their Google + circles up top. The tool is called “Don’t Do Evil” and the tool itself is available on their website.What the tool does, according to the FAQ, “uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.”Many people who do not stay on top of the ever…

• Getting Your Business LinkedIn To Action

  Greg Henderson

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:55 am

  LinkedIn is a social networking site geared toward professionals and career development.  It is different from Facebook and MySpace because it does not have an over-abundance of games, pokes, likes, applications, silly statuses, and other features that can sometimes border on the unprofessional.People of all levels have LinkedIn accounts; users include self-employed people, middle-management, and top executives.  Furthermore, companies (including all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies) have their own accounts to promote themselves.  Companies that have a page frequently have their employees…

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  Search Marketing - Darin Carter

• On my way to ASW 2012

  Darin

  7 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pm

  It’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

• Is Google trying to get you to give out your email to spammers?

  Darin

  21 Dec 2011 | 8:44 am

  *** UPDATE BELOW *** So this morning I was doing a few searches and I noticed a very weird looking ad, had to double take for a second … Am I seeing that correctly … Google has a Advertiser that is paying for a PPC ad, and directly has the option for the Searcher to GIVE UP their Email Address and Zip Code ! Looks like a new Ad Type in the Testing Phase if you ask me … hummm … wonder how FreeFly’s was lucky enough to get this very attractive ad ! Well would be interested in seeing what comes out of this, and how google is compensated for getting them a email…

• Pay per click campaigns need to be properly planned

  Darin

  27 Oct 2011 | 5:27 am

  If you want to market a product or service, the internet is the only place where you can get a large audience. All the other forms of marketing and advertising cost a lot of money. Also, there is no  guarantee that you would reach the intended group of people. But with  the internet, you can target exactly those people who would be interested in using your product or service. One of the best tools that  are available for companies that are looking to market through the  internet is the pay per click option. There are a lot of people who think that the pay per click option is very…

• Google Panda Update

  Darin

  5 May 2011 | 12:05 am

  Over at TechCrunch today there is a article on the Google Panda Update. This raises a GREAT question, is Google being fair with their own internal sites? HubPages has seen a negative impact from this change, but so far YouTube has not (Search Metrics Winners). One presumes Google isn’t treating its own affiliated sites differently than any other site, but YouTube’s open publishing environment makes low-quality content as prevalent as on any other moderated open publishing platform. Google shows over 13 million indexed videos on YouTube for lose weight (known spammy area) and over 10…

• Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation

  Darin

  28 Mar 2011 | 10:29 pm

  Lead generation is a very important aspect to consider whether you are involved in online or offline marketing. You can get leads by through search engine marketing and initiating pay per click campaigns. In online marketing, leads are equivalent to customers who will buy. Therefore, it is important to have landing pages that are well optimized in order to maximize your marketing efforts. There are a number of things you should do to ensure your landing page will not only get you leads, but quality leads too. These include: Informative and Persuasive Sales Content The content of your landing…

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  Maine SEO Blog

• 3 Unique Ways to Find New (and Relevant) Tweeps on Twitter

  Nicki

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:32 am

  Whether you’re new to Twitter or you’ve been on it for what seems like a decade, it’s easy to get stuck in who you’re following. You may even find that you don’t actively make searches for new people like you used to. It’s time to break out of that.  Since Twitter has become so filled with spam (or that’s what it feels like, at least), why not try finding valuable Tweeps in more unique ways? People Search Sure, you’ve used the Twitter Search function before, but that usually means you’ll have to spend hours and hours sorting through piles…

• 10 Tips for A Successful Facebook Ad Campaign | Facebook Ads

  Joan

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:29 pm

  Trying and Succeeding So, my friend Megan and I had lunch together today. She was telling me all about her new Facebook Ad Campaigns that she is running for her Facebook Business Pages. She’s had a lot of success lately so we were comparing notes on some of our processes and tricks. Below is a compilation of some of her tips and some of my own… 1. Have a goal: If you are going to start a Facebook Ad campaign you better know what you are trying to accomplish. Is it more likes? Brand awareness? Event registrations? Sales? What is your goal for the ad? This answer is going to…

• Can Search Engines Read PDF Files? PDF Optimization for SEO

  Joan

  9 Jan 2012 | 12:05 pm

  Can search engines read PDF files and if so how well? This is a great question posed by one of our developers this morning at our staff meeting. So, guessing that others are asking the same question I thought I would create a post about it. The quick answer is, Yes. All search engines can read PDF files. Therefore it’s important to optimize your PDF for the search engines. How to Optimize your PDF for SEO - First step is to make sure that you create your PDF in a text based program like Microsoft Word or Adobe Pagemaker. If you create your PDF in Photoshop, it is considered a large…

• The Best of 2011 from flyte new media: Most Popular Posts on the flyte blog, Maine SEO, and Florida SEO

  Nicki

  1 Jan 2012 | 7:09 am

  This will be my third year in a row creating a “best of the year” post; feel free to check out posts from 2010 and 2009, too. This year, I’ve done the best at flyte: from our flyte blog, Maine SEO blog, and Florida SEO blog. Go ahead and browse the archives; enjoy! flyte blog 50 – Count ‘em, 50! – Creative Uses of QR Codes Print Keynote Handouts Like PowerPoint Post to your Facebook Business Page as you…and more! What is a QR Code? What is QR Code Marketing? What is a Facebook Landing Page and Why Do I Need One? Maine SEO What is a Good Bounce Rate in…

• What Does It Mean to “Keep Up With SEO”?

  Nicki

  27 Dec 2011 | 2:30 am

  A client asked me this recently and it’s a fantastic question! After we optimize a client’s website, I’ll always say that it’s important to keep up with SEO even after launch. Simply put, things change online so quickly that it’s imperative you – and your website, blog, social media presence, etc. – keep up. So….how can you keep up with SEO without becoming overwhelmed? Check your GA monthly. Set up your Google Analytics so that you get monthly reports emailed to you directly. Pay specific attention to the keywords visitors use when they come to…

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  Traffick: The Business of Search

• When Things Change, They’re Actually Different

  Andrew Goodman

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:37 am

  Turmoil is all around us, old assumptions no longer valid. Richard Florida deftly lays out the scenario for the current economic and spatial Great Reset. Bob Garfield outlines the Chaos Scenario in traditional media and advertising (upon which I comment favorably here). Friendly, iron-fist in a velvet glove American liberalism-cum-imperialism is laid to waste in Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class. Seth Godin refers to a “forever recession,” somehow managing to remain optimistic (“and the coming revolution”) on behalf of the self-starters who can connect…

• AdWords, Declining Click Prices (CPC’s), and Interface Optics: Two Theories

  Andrew Goodman

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:25 pm

  Google’s recent financial results weren’t nearly as bad as the markets seemed to think. By any rational standard, once again they turned in a strong Q4 and strong YOY growth. Earnings were very solid. All they did was miss Wall Street expectations slightly. If revenues and profits were up sharply — but below expectations — were there any red flags at all? It appears so. While total paid clicks were up 34% year over year, click prices in the form of average CPC’s were actually down a whopping 8% from the same period in 2010. Google didn’t provide a…

• So are Google Search results crap, or aren’t they?

  Andrew Goodman

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:02 pm

  The latest debates over Google Search results, search quality, antitrust, and other drama are only the latest in a long period of rapid change for Google in the search arena. That period, pretty much the past seven years, has been marked by (a) growth in new technology and soft innovations intended to handle the scale of search as well as more complex user intent puzzles; (b) the ongoing challenges Google faces in satisfying public expectations of relevant results in an environment characterized by gaming and spam. Other trends have included (c) mobile, (d) the rapid growth in video and the…

• A Website is Like a Company, and Vice-Versa. Post-Revolution,There Really is No ‘Revert’

  Andrew Goodman

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:55 pm

  You’ve been through it. Everyone you know has probably been through it, at some point. Your website and the platform is built on are now five (or, aaaghh! seven or eight!) years old, and your website redesign and relaunch are long overdue. But what pain are you going to endure, and how much money will you spend (lose?) before you come out the “other side”? That was the premise of our session at SES Chicago last November, “Navigating the Dip: Planning a Successful Site Relaunch” (with thanks to Seth Godin for inspiration). It may be comforting to say to yourself…

• Dear Touchy-Feelies: Once Again, A Reminder… Most of the Internet is Free

  Andrew Goodman

  6 Dec 2011 | 3:37 pm

  Facebook is free, essentially for three reasons: People pay for apps and games, and Facebook’s cut of that subsidizes the platform You view and/or click on ads, and that also subsidizes the platform 9-figure investments have allowed Facebook to “undermonetize” its huge investment in creating and supporting the user experience A fourth reason: you, the consumer, refuse to pay. This dynamic applies to most of the rest of the Internet, too. The things you enjoy are monetized primarily with ads. Services like: Google Search GMail Content sites Some services are virtually…

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  Inside AdWords

• Love at first Search

  Inside AdWords crew

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  More and more people are falling in love with Valentine’s Day. According to a recent survey by ORC International, Valentine’s Day is now the number two gift giving holiday, right behind Christmas, with 88% of Americans saying they plan on giving a present to their loved ones. This should be great news for businesses, but marketers still have trouble making a love connection with consumers based on charts that look more like dated EKG readings than real-time insights into the heart of the consumer. Since getting the affections of one person is hard enough, below are some timely insights…

• Create more Automated Rules and undo changes

  Inside AdWords crew

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  We heard your feedback that you want Automated Rules to be even more flexible and useful, so we rolled out two improvements - increased rule limit to 100 and the ability to undo changes made by a rule. 1. Increased rule limit to 100 We increased the number of rules you can create from 10 rules per user to 100. This should allow you to easily try out new rules -- have a look at common examples to see how advertisers are using Automated Rules. 2. Ability to undo changes made by a rule In the event that a rule doesn’t make the changes that you expect, you can easily undo them by clicking…

• Coming Soon: Ad Group Impression Share Metrics

  Katie Wasilenko

  17 Jan 2012 | 11:32 am

  Based on advertiser requests, we will soon offer ad group level impression share metrics for the Search and Display Networks. Once released, you can use ad group impression share data to, for example, better identify high performing ad groups that aren't capturing the majority of available impressions.In the next few weeks, you will see three new columns that can be added to your ad groups tab:Impr. Share: the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.Lost IS (Rank): the share of impressions lost due to your Ad Rank.

• Visit the re-designed AdWords Help Center today

  Inside AdWords crew

  10 Jan 2012 | 12:34 pm

  Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis: see what Americans have been buzzing about for weeks!We launched a new look for the AdWords Help Center and it's now available in your countries! Since we introduced it in the U.S. just a few weeks ago, thousands of AdWords users in America have already opted-in. And the feedback is overwhelmingly positive! You asked for a better Help Center -- you got it!Here are the changes we're rolling out today:1. Simpler navigation: More easily navigate to the right content using the new menu at the top of each page.(click for full-size image)2. Visible contact options: Find…

• On your marks, get set, GOMC!

  Inside AdWords crew

  27 Dec 2011 | 12:00 pm

  We’re pleased to announce that professor registration for the 2012 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC 2012), our global student competition, is now open! Student registration, however, will open January 31, 2012. In order for student teams to participate in the competition, their professors must first register. But what is this challenge, you ask?  The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global online marketing competition for students from any higher education institution in the world. Students must develop and run a successful online advertising campaigns through Google…

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  adCenter Blog

• Money-Saving Tips on Creating Your Own Marketing Brochure In-House #SMB #smallbiz

  Melissa Zieger - Guest Blogger

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Customers love when businesses have printed materials to share. Whether you are a real estate agent or flower shop owner, the power of a good brochure that delivers your message with vivid visual impact cannot be overestimated. A marketing brochure can boost your sales efforts instantly, and by creating those materials in-house, you can save both time and money. Why create a brochure in-house? There are some great benefits for small businesses that print materials in-house. Not only does using high-quality printers like OfficeJets make it easy to save big with in-house marketing materials,…

• The Evolution of Bing, adCenter Feedback and What M&Ms Have in Common with Both

  Tina Kelleher - MSFT

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  While scrolling through my Facebook feed last night, I ran across a shared link from a friend highlighting a Technorati article by Andrew Froehlich, Bing: The New King of Search .* Needless to say, I felt compelled to click through… having watched...(read more)

• UK Bing Launches ‘Help Your Britain’ Campaign to Celebrate the Work of Britain’s Unsung Charities #helpyourbritain, #charity

  Simone Schuurer - MSFT

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:12 am

  Every once in a while I do wonder if I shouldn’t be doing something a little bit more, well useful with my life. Don’t you? Perhaps I should get my driving license, buy a race car and get on with it but seriously: this isn’t midlife crisis just yet. The good intentions are all there but the time isn’t, not now anyway. That’s why it’s so nice to see that Bing (the search engine you should all be advertising on to achieve an amazing ROI with our help) has been lending its homepage to small charities this week enabling them to tell their story to Bing’s…

• The Two Things Every #PPC Beginner Should Know How to Do #SMB #smallbiz

  Erik Kjerland - MSFT

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  If you’re a small business owner new to the world of online advertising, you may be a bit overwhelmed by all the of the options and features that are available to you. How can all of this help you sell your product or service? I won’t try...(read more)

• Content is King in the Land of #SEO - Get an Early Bird Discount on Tickets for the Online Business Makeover Event London on 12th March 2012 #Smallbiz

  Nick James - Guest Blogger

  24 Jan 2012 | 5:02 am

  Nick James is founder of Fresh Business Thinking , the leading website for small-to-medium size businesses in the UK. Over 55% of traffic to Nick’s websites comes from search engines pointing queries to top quality ideas and information making Nick...(read more)

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  PPC Strategies & Pay Per Click News | PPC Hero

• Everything You Need to Know About Ad Position in AdWords

  Sarah

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:25 pm

  Ad position, the forest containing all your account metric trees! (Sorry, it’s Friday, and the clichés abound.) A high quality score combined with the right keyword bid means your ad gets a higher and higher position on Google SERPs. But, how do you analyze your ad position in AdWords? And, how do you know what your optimal position really is? Some accounts do perform better when ads are shown on the side versus the top of a page, as we’ll explore a little later in the post. My goal today is to help give you a solid understanding of ad position in AdWords so that you can think about this…

• PPC & Time Management: A Make-It-Better Checklist

  Kayla Kurtz

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:41 pm

  With the first month of the New Year nearly behind us, it’s time to reflect. Take a look at your to-do list for the month. Have you gotten everything done? I’ll bet not! Guess what? That’s ok! We’re all human and we’re certainly not perfect. You may even intend to knock a few more things off your list before the month comes to a complete close and I encourage you to keep working at it, but I’m also here to help with some tips for how you can improve your time management skills! Last week we had our monthly full-day training session at Hanapin and the following lists and helpful…

• Analytics Regular Expression Characters

  Bethany Bey

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:04 pm

  Regular expressions can seem like a foreign language, but once you know how they work you won’t know how you ever used Google Analytics without them . This post will help you understand how each of the regular expressions function and includes examples of how they can be used for your account. What is does: Turns the character following the backslash into plain text. How it works: Say you want to create a goal for the url /thankyou?id=123. In Regex, “?” has another meaning, which we’ll get to in a little bit, but we need it to be plain text since it is part of the url string. To…

• Interview with Matthew Umbro, Founder of PPC Chat

  Laura Johnston

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  We had the pleasure of an interview with Matthew Umbro, the founder of PPC Chat and Senior PPC Specialist at Exclusive Concepts.  Matthew will be speaking at Hero Conf, April 16-17, 2012, in Indianapolis, IN.  We are looking forward to hearing Matthew present “Proving the Value of PPC through Conversion Tracking,” as well as share his knowledge on the Account Structure panel.  If you would like to hear Matthew and other PPC experts speak at Hero Conf, you can register here.  If you register before January 30, you will also receive your company’s logo in the conference…

• How To Use Automated Rules in Google AdWords

  Amanda @Amanda_WestBook

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:18 pm

  This week, Kayla Kurtz shows you how to use Automated Rules in Google AdWords and how they can be your best friend. Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

• 

  Search Marketing Sage

• Video Search Optimization

  Sarah Lokitis

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:25 am

  At Search Mojo, we recently made a video about the Search Mojo Corporate Culture. When our Marketing Director, Cady, was uploading the video, it got me thinking about where videos should be uploaded, along with strategies for excellent keyword tagging. Having strong keywords is important because you want to show up with related videos, on [...]

• Free Webinar: The Secrets to Getting Positive ROI from Facebook

  Cady Condyles

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:37 pm

  Search Mojo is hosting a free webinar, The Secrets to Getting Positive ROI from Facebook, next Thursday at 2 p.m. ET. Janet Driscoll Miller, CEO and President, of the Facebook advertising management and search engine marketing firm Search Mojo and Maya Grinberg, Social Media Manager of Wildfire Interactive, will headline a free webinar reviewing why [...]

• Google Search Plus Your World Needs a Quality Rater

  Tad Miller

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:51 am

  January 10, 2012 will go down in history as the day that Google "Jumped the Shark". In introducing it's new "Search Plus Your World" search results it ignored the very thing that made them the world's best search engine - RELEVANCE.

• 3 Reasons Why Pay Per Click Advertising Should be in Your 2012 Marketing Plan

  Justin Champion

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:47 am

  So the new year crept up on you pretty quickly and now you’re looking for new marketing tactics to help increase your bottom line in 2012. There may be many different options on your plate to choose from, but make 2012 the year where you crave definitive results from your marketing plan. Here are 3 [...]

• SOPA, PIPA and Search Engine Marketing

  Ariele McWhinney

  19 Jan 2012 | 10:23 am

  If you just happened to be on the internet yesterday, you may have noticed many websites you visited were protesting the controversial bills SOPA and PIPA by “blacking-out” their logos or going dark completely for the day. What is this all about? And in this volatile internet marketing world we’re in, what are the implications [...]

• 

  Genuine SEO

• Make Money Online Interview With Zk from Web Traffic ROI

  Eddie Gear

  28 Jan 2012 | 4:48 am

  As part of the Make Money Online Interview series, that I have been doing for a while with bloggers who are really making money online. I hope you find these interviews useful and I hope they help you in your efforts to make money blogging. This week, I have Zk from WebTrafficROI who shares his insights and tips on what he does best. 1. Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Zk? I am an internet marketing consultant and a blogger, I make a living consulting in the digital space and blogging 2. I understand that you make money online using BSA ads, Can you share something…

• Facebook Timeline Examples To Be Inspired

  Eddie Gear

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Facebook Timeline has made a big difference to facebook users around the world. Facebook users are inspired to use creative images to represent their timeline pages. While people are doing this and creating stunning facebook timeline examples, we decided to explore and get you some awesome timelines worth looking at. Use these cover images as inspiration to make your timeline memorable and may be I will add your facebook timeline here as well. Aly Moffatt http://www.facebook.com/aly.moffatt             Delphin Hauchard…

• Make Money On YouTube

  Eddie Gear

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:45 pm

  As I reach my 200th post on this blog, I would love to talk to you about my successes, however this is not the time for that. May be I will try and start publishing about my traffic and income on a monthly basis. Right now let me talk to you about how to Make Money On YouTube. While there are several bloggers who are making money from writing and selling products, video sites like YouTube also offer a great deal of opportunities to help people make money. Recently I read this article on Business Insider that said “We recently profiled 10 YouTube stars who have already figured out how to…

• Five Things The Movie Drunken Master Taught Me About Blogging

  Eddie Gear

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  It was about 9PM in the evening and I was watching the movie drunken master and remember my girlfriend telling me something about my blog. It was a matter of minutes before I noticed that there are some key elements to the success of the movie as to my blog.  There were specifically Five Things The Movie Drunken Master Thought Me About Blogging. One Style Does Not Help You Win The key point that I learned during the last part of the movie, where Jackie Chan combines all his fighting styles to defeat the villain. Similar to that, in blogging, you simply cannot do just one thing and expect to…

• Keep It Simple Stupid Is Your Way To Blog Success

  Eddie Gear

  22 Jan 2012 | 3:32 am

  Through the years of blogging there are many a things that I’ve learned and though my fellow bloggers and readers. People from India, Australia, America, Brazil and many more places have learned and built success around their blog. In today’s post I will share with you one key Way To Blog Success, it the concept of KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. Not every one is an expert and know about what your writing or talking on your blog. There are millions of blogs being started daily, there are millions of people who are looking for answers on the web, looking to learn new things, people with…

• 

  Location3 Media Inc

• How Franchises Can Measure Geo-social Campaigns

  Angie

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:03 pm

  Everyone is deeply connected to their local community and the businesses within that community. These local stores are part of our daily lives—grabbing coffee at a café on the way to work, meeting for lunch at a deli around the corner and stopping at a pharmacy on the way home. It doesn’t matter if the store is a mom-and-pop shop or local chain from an international franchise, customers view the store as part of their immediate environment and thus have a stronger relationship. That’s why it’s so important for franchises and multi-unit businesses to create a uniquely local presence…

• Search Plus Your World: Does Personalized = Better?

  Tarla

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:58 am

  Last week we were hit with the Google’s newest push towards integrating social into search. We initially wrote about how Search Plus Your World may affect online marketing strategies, but in the last week I’ve started to witness some interesting effects in the search results that make me wonder. While I have no doubt that tying in social is where search is going, I ask the question if this most recent shift has indeed improved the search experience. I recently ran the search “how to make an online game” (don’t judge), and for the first time noticed the little blue people icons…

• The Future of Local Marketing: 3 Themes to Plan By

  Anne Baum

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:01 am

  This past week, one of our favorite local gurus, Mike Blumenthal, brought together his favorite local talking heads to provide their take on the themes that shaped 2011 in Loci 2011.  We’ve analyzed their observations to shape our predictions for local marketing tactics and shifts in the way the industry will approach geo-social over the next year. Back to Basics Provide information about your business.  The heart of local search remains the same. Give the searchers what they want-a great user experience and information about your business. David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors…

• How Brands Can Use Pinterest

  Angie

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  UPDATE (01/23/12): It was only a matter of time before Pinterest went the way of most sites and stopped their links from passing weight. As of today, Pinterest has made the links on all pins “no follow” meaning that they no longer contribute SEO value. This does not, however, make Pinterest less important for brands. Showcasing and curating content, and engaging with users through Pinterest can still be a major benefit for brands. The tips and ideas below are still valid, excluding the section on SEO Benefits. WHAT IS PINTEREST? Pinterest is digital bookmarking website that allows…

• Yahoo! Removes RMX Inventory from DSPs

  Kristi Jackson

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:43 pm

  Yahoo! made a major change last month to who can access their display ad inventory. As of December 2nd, Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange (RMX) class II remnant inventory is no longer available on demand side platforms (DSPs) and other networks. In order to advertise on this inventory, advertisers must secure a spot on RMX, a long and time-intensive process. Yahoo’s motivation for moving the inventory is to drive display ad sales directly through its team, giving them the ability to charge higher cost per thousand impressions (CPM’s) for this inventory. Best practice for advertisers…

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  Search Engine Marketing Blog

• Analyzing B2B Marketing Trends

  seo

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:10 am

  There’s been so much interesting analysis and insight in the marketing world that we’ll keep it rolling with some more white paper findings! Today, we’ll take a look at SEO through the B2B lense in MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. Take a look at this graph, as it shows the average allocation of marketing [...]

• Optimization for a Lower Bounce Rate

  seo

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:08 am

  How high is your website’s bounce rate? Obviously, a lower bounce rate is desirable. But depending on your industry, the “norm” can greatly vary. If you take a look inside your Google Analytics account, it’s important to remember to look not only at the OVERALL bounce rate, but the bounce rate of individual landing pages. [...]

• 3 Missing Elements of Social Media Success

  seo

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:08 am

  comScore and Buddy Media Research recently released a report on the effectiveness of social promotions during this past 2011 retail holiday season. If you haven’t seen the 17 slide presentation yet, it’s time to take a look before planning your next social media campaign. While the report analyzes bigger brands like Amazon, Best Buy, and [...]

• Are You Obsessed with Keyword Rankings?

  seo

  17 Jan 2012 | 4:10 am

  obsessed – past participle, past tense of ob·sess (Verb) Verb: Preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent: “he was obsessed with thoughts of suicide”. – If this word best describes your relationship with your keywords, there’s a big problem. Whether you’re dealing with your own search rankings or [...]

• Keyword Research Ideas and Tools

  seo

  13 Jan 2012 | 3:09 am

  Sometimes, research for keyword advertisting can be totally redundant and uninteresting. If you’re feeling like you’re stuck in a rut, here are few ideas that will hopefully revitalize you and hopefully give you that spark that you need: Related terms and synonyms – Need a better idea of what keywords to use? In your next [...]

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  SiteFox

• Politics, Small Businesses, and You…

  Samir Balwani

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  We don’t often talk about politics here, but we came across this awesome infographic that is definitely useful for all small business owners. If you’re not sure who you’re voting for this year, check out the infographic below to see how each candidate stands on small business issues. I’m sure it will change and hopefully we’ll get some updates. In the mean time check it out and let me know what you think. How much of an impact does the candidate’s stance on small business issues impact your choice? Credit: FastUpFront – Business Loans Made Easy.

• The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide [Free Download]

  Samir Balwani

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Let’s face it. Online marketing is difficult to understand and even harder to execute successfully. There’s so much talk about using Facebook and Twitter or having a conversation with your customers. How are you, a small business owner, supposed to find the time to learn all the in’s and out’s of online marketing? That’s why we put together the SiteFox Marketing Guide. It’s a 99-page guide that explains exactly what you need to know about marketing your business online. It also includes a set of action plans to help you execute a successful online marketing…

• Definitive Guide to Word of Mouth Marketing

  Samir Balwani

  22 Dec 2011 | 11:16 am

  Think back to a time you had a problem you needed solved. How’d you find the business you’re using now? Most likely you did one of two things: searched a business directory (maybe online) OR you asked a friend for a recommendation. Having people recommend your business is the basis of word of mouth marketing. It’s doing something so memorable that people talk about you; it’s tied to customer service, viral marketing, and just being a business people like working with. How are you maximizing your word of mouth marketing? What are you doing to make sure people talk about…

• Our Marketing Tracking Document [Free Download]

  Samir Balwani

  20 Dec 2011 | 1:00 am

  When we first started marketing SiteFox, we realized that it wasn’t all about big marketing campaigns or messaging programs. We quickly learned that it was really about maximizing our returns from each channel. One of the things we did early on was setup a document to track each channel and gauge its efficiency for registering new clients. The efficiency is based off a number we derived after deciding on how much of our revenue we wanted to invest in marketing. We’ve been using the spreadsheet for a while now and it’s really helped us strategically invest money in ways that…

• Dos and Don’ts for Your Small Business Newsletter

  Samir Balwani

  15 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  Although social media gets all the buzz, email marketing still continues to be an extremely lucrative marketing channel. Businesses are continuing to grow their email lists and connecting with consumers through their newsletters. Making sure you’re creating an active newsletter list directly effects your revenue from your emails. Following a few core rules will make sure you get the most from your list and keep your subscribers happy and opening your emails. Do: Use a Professional Template The first tip is to use a professional template. You’ll notice that a lot of people use the plain…

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  Daily SEO Tip

• Google Personalized Search: We Know Where You Live…

  Ann Smarty

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:51 am

  When Google launched Local Search, it introduced personalization, the art of guessing where you are and what you wanted to find, and presenting search results to suit. Since its debut in 2009, the local map feature has been ever-present, highlighting locations that are in the geographical area indicated by your IP address, or, if you dare provide it, by your recorded location. People were already uneasy about Google’s data-collecting activities. As early as December 2008, the New York Times highlighted concerns that personal privacy might be the trade-off for convenience in retrieving…

• Beef Up Your Internet Marketing and Your Body At The Same Time!

  Guest Contributor

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:48 am

  In today’s health-conscious society, everyone has spent at least a couple minutes of their life thinking about (or purposely ignoring) their diet. Is this meal healthy? How many calories are in this? Does this bacon-wrapped butterball make my butt look fat? The theory and principles behind improving your health and getting better results can also be attributed to what you do or do not contribute to the health and welfare of your website’s SEO.  Here are a few suggestions on how you can lose weight and improve your rankings at the same time. I hear onsite audits are quite slimming...

• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business?

  Guest Contributor

  18 Jan 2012 | 7:57 am

  Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, which is used by millions of users to read and send text-based messages of up to 140 characters, also known as ‘tweets’. It’s like steady flow of communication that is at our whim. It helps to gain knowledge and information and spread our ideas. For most of the people, it’s just another social networking site with different concept but they don’t realize it has far more benefits especially for the business persons. You can use it to grow your business by increasing contacts and also getting your consumers attention. Here are some useful tips: -…

• Twitter Resolutions For 2012

  Guest Contributor

  17 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Twitter can be a very powerful social media vehicle, but are you using the 140 character social network to it’s fullest? It’s a new year, and with a new Twitter interface, here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re tweeting your way into the new year. Purge Your Follow/Followers Are all 3,000 of your followers people you actually want to share with? Or are the 5,000 people you follow people whose Twitters you care about or are relevant to you and your industry and interests? The answer is probably not. So take the time one evening to go through those on Twitter that…

• 5 Reasons Why MyBlogGuest is My Best Find after 5 Years as Webmaster

  Guest Contributor

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:53 am

  The author of this guest post has long decided to make a living exclusively on-line. That was 5 years ago, and he never looked back. In this time, I learned a lot of cool things about the Internet, and I made acquaintances and friends with many interesting folks from around the world. Since I’m doing this full-time, I regularly come across useful communities and resources which turn out instrumental to advancing my career and getting increased results from my efforts. But none of it really compares to My Blog Guest: this is simply my best find after 5 years as a webmaster. As many of you…

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  Online Marketing Blog

• Online Marketing News: Women Dominate Community Management, Google Privacy, FBI Social, Twitter Censorship, McD Hashtag Gone Wrong

  Ashley Zeckman

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:40 am

  The 2012 Community Manager Report Community Manager is an essential, yet still uncharted territory for many companies that are expanding their presence on the social web.  What should you know about the current state of this position? 67% of Community Managers work for a brand The most popular city for Community Managers is New York 65% of Community Managers are Female Be sure to check out the rest of this report presented by Social Fresh. Google & FBI: All Your Social Data Are Belong to Us For non-geeks, here’s the reference (Zero Wing video) “Google Privacy Changes: What…

• 5 Basic SEO Troubleshooting Tips for Content Marketers

  Lee Odden

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  Content Marketing Not Performing? Troubleshoot SEO Basics. This post is a preview of a new downloadable guide I will be offering for those who pre-order Optimize by March 13, 2012. The full guide will have screenshots, examples and more “SEO Deep Dive” advice. If you want the full, illustrated Content Marketing SEO Troubleshooting Guide, visit OptimizeBook.com to pre-order and subscribe to our mailing list for more details. Content Marketing at its core is about planning information that is thoughtful about the needs and interests of target customer groups as they take the…

• Optimize Your Social Media Schedule: 4 Tips for Avoiding the Social Media Time Suck

  Ashley Zeckman

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:56 am

  Making the time to execute on a social media strategy can rattle even the most experienced marketers.  Unlike traditional marketing, social media marketing can present many different challenges and distractions.  According to a study by eMarketer 73% of marketers say finding the time to create content as their biggest marketing challenge. I recently ran a poll of @TopRank Twitter followers to get a sense of how they spend their time online.  I asked “If you had only 20 minutes a day to spend on social media what would you focus on?”  Some of the answers we received were:…

• 11 Ways to Get Smarter & Stay Current in a World of Social Information Overload

  Lee Odden

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:41 am

  Online Marketing is all about information. And people. Making connections that solve marketing problems in today’s environment of social and technological innovation can be challenging. Like many readers of this blog, a big part of what I do as an Internet Marketer centers around being able to consume large amounts of information or better, the right information, synthesizing it and using insights to help others make sense of the challenges and opportunities they face with marketing on the web. As an author, frequent speaker at industry conferences, advisor to clients and the people who…

• Online Marketing News: Say NOPA to SOPA, Google+ Strikes Again, Coca Cola “Gets It”, Twitter Gobbles Up Summify

  Ashley Zeckman

  20 Jan 2012 | 6:31 am

  The Social Job Seekers The social media job market is hot! This infographic visualizes the 2011 Social Job Seeker Survey that was conducted by Jobvite.  It examines who the job seekers are and how they are utilizing social media to find jobs.  Some interesting statistics you may not be aware of: 61% of all employed Americans are open to a new job or actively looking for a new one. 4 out of 10 job seekers are “Super Social” and have 150+ contacts on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. 1 in 6 job seekers found their last job through an online social network. This Week in News About Google…

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  Outspoken Media

• Lies Writers Tell To Cripple Your SEO Copywriting

  Lisa Barone

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  Even the newest of SEOs and marketers understand how important content is to developing a brand presence. Your content is who you are. It’s your voice in the market and what you use to convey your message to customers. It’s through the combination of your Web site copy, your blog, your article marketing, your pitches, and your social updates that you reach prospective customers and turn them on until they become full-blown customers. There’s just one problem. You…well, you can’t write. Or at least that’s what you’ve been telling yourself for the past thirty years. Because you…

• How To Avoid Community Manager Burn Out

  Lisa Barone

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:46 am

  Monday was Community Manager Appreciation Day, an online event started by Jeremiah Owyang three years ago to honor and recognize those who fight on the brand front lines every day. Last year I honored the day by offering up 8 ingredients that make a community manager and paid homage to a few folks who I think do it really well. This year I wanted to talk about something different. I recently gave a community manager interview where I was asked whether CMs were finally being given the respect they deserve, what goes into the position, and what their roles are within an organization. You can…

• Walking The “Be Human” Line In Social Media

  Lisa Barone

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  It started innocently enough. My buddy Matt Sullivan read an article on Fast Company about Chobani tickling the taste of Pinterest. He thought it sounded similar to the love letter I had written earlier, so he sent it to me via Twitter knowing I might want to check it out. The “flavor Tourettes” line is in reference to a quote found in the Fast Company article. When discussing how fanatical people are about engaging with the Chobani Facebook page, Chobani’s digital communications manager Emily Schildt is quoted as saying: “We call it ‘flavor Turettes’ in-house,” she quips.

• Weekend Coffee Links: Willpower Edition

  Lisa Barone

  21 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Hi! Oh…you’re here.  Fine. I guess that means I have to stop eating cake now. Did you hear we celebrated a birthday this week? If not, check out Rhea’s post from earlier this week where she talks about Outspoken Media in 2012, what we’ve been up to and what’s still to come.  It’ll give you a pretty good glimpse into why we walk around so excited all the time. [It's because our team is awesome.] But it’s time for Weekend Coffee Links! Our collection of everything that caught our eye this week. Ready to jump in? How to be an effective CEO: Chief…

• Outspoken Media: Looking to 2012

  Rhea Drysdale

  19 Jan 2012 | 10:33 am

  It’s January 19th. Crack open the champagne, because it’s time to celebrate! What’s so special about today? Today is Outspoken Media’s birthday. A birthday that comes a couple weeks after the New Year, which means Lisa and I have been in a period of intense introspection (or holiday food comas, who knows). But isn’t that what we do on birthdays and at New Years? We think about the past and how we got here and we think about where we’re going. When you own a business, those are the most important questions to ask yourself: How did we get here? Where are we…

• 

  aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

• Shhh! Duluth Social Media Marketing Conference Planned By Business Leaders

  Marty Weintraub

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:55 pm

  You heard it here first! The Duluth Chamber of Commerce is about to announce an ambitious three track social media marketing conference. “Zenith Social Media Marketing Conference 2012, Tips, Tools, Tactics, & Beyond,” will be held May 23, in multiple locations in our beautiful city. Here’s the cool secret: The agenda was sequenced by aimClear and we’re importing a number of our accomplished colleagues to set the speaking roster’s tone.  Yep, these are some of the same illuminating panelists you’ve see us presenting aside at international conferences over the…

• Dear #Facebook Ads Global Marketing Solutions Team: #WTF?

  Merry Morud

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:39 am

  At a valuation of about $50 Billion Dollars, with oodles of advertising revenue marching through its doors every day, we’re concerned that Facebook is not effectively servicing advertisers. We think the newly launched “Facebook Global Marketing Solutions Team” is a downgrade-wolf in the suit of a buzzwordy-sheep. From our own experience, we can vouch for that fact that speaking for millions of dollars of media spend does not rate a dedicated account rep’ any more. WTF? Read on for the gory details.  Where did the account reps go? What happened to familiar support…

• 32 Totally Free Google “Search Plus Your World” #SEO Resources

  Marty Weintraub

  21 Jan 2012 | 1:24 pm

  Businesses: Raise your hand if you barely cared about Google+ until your SEO consultant called to say now you just have to. While the disproportionate weight Google is placing on + driven results may be unhealthy for SERPs in the short term, opening a relatively easy + door to bomb Google SERPs serves the function of enlisting SEOs to goad businesses into participating in Google’s fledgling social community. Google’s strategy is brilliant, sort of like a sardonic dominatrix forcing her ambivalent quarry to capitulate with promises of immediate pleasure, ultimately resulting in…

• Harnessing Headline Theories! Flashpoints To Final Polish

  Marty Weintraub

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:49 am

  My content marketing mentors were marvelous gray-haired men and woman, who cut their teeth during the Mad Men era. They trained me to develop story headlines first by brainstorming quickly through numerous theory statements, choosing the appropriate concept to develop, and then taking time to build out a polished headline. The timeless premise is that it’s important to fully understand what needs to be communicated before attempting to package it in a headline. Otherwise, time may be wasted on spin and tone without a clear vision of what needs to be imparted. When one attempts to shred…

• aimClear’s Facebook Marketing Workshop Gets Rad Makeover @ #SMX West

  Lauren Litwinka

  12 Jan 2012 | 12:22 pm

  A new year calls for a new look… at least, that’s what any hot-blooded fashionista will tell you. Here at aimClear, we’re embracing that concept and mapping it to, among other things, our Facebook Marketing Intensive– just in time for it’s one year anniversary, to boot. Yes, it was one year ago we unveiled our full-day workshop on the stage of #SMX West. The aimClear team is stoked to return to sunny San Jose, armed with an exciting new curriculum brimming with even more hot, juicy, actionable takeaways in a radically revamped agenda. This is one Facebook…

• 

  Blogstorm

• Will Google penalise itself for excessive ads above the fold?

  Patrick Altoft

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:34 am

  Google has released an algorithm update today designed to penalise websites that have too many ads above the fold (in the visible area of the page). This is a great move by Google because nobody wants to see pages full of ads. The problem is that Google is being very hypocritical here because over the years the amount of ads on the search results pages have been getting bigger and bigger. When you take into account YouTube and Google Places the space for organic search results (the only real content that Google offers) is getting much smaller. As suggested in Googles blog post I went to their…

• Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World

  Patrick Altoft

  12 Jan 2012 | 2:55 am

  This week Google has announced a major change to their search results called “Search plus Your World” which isn’t a particularly catchy title. There is an excellent summary of this feature here and examples of how Google favours Google+ here – this post is mainly my thoughts on the service. When I first tried the system yesterday afternoon I searched for “golf” and Google came up with pictures of myself and some friends on a golf holiday in 2005. For an average searcher they probably wouldn’t think this was amazing but I think it’s pretty mind…

• Clever fake New Years Day PPC ads using DailyMail.co.uk as display URL

  Patrick Altoft

  1 Jan 2012 | 4:52 pm

  If you were to click on the Google logo on New Years day it would have taken you to the search results for the phrase “New Year’s Day” as shown in the screenshot below. When I looked at this the dailymail.co.uk advert stood out to me because although the Daily Mail isn’t noted for high level journalism I very much doubt they use PPC to promote stories. Sure enough when I clicked on the ad it took me straight to a really really clever site about some kind of wrinkle treatment. The clever bit about this page is that it uses a geotargeting script to automatically insert…

• iOS 5 Disables Cookies & Breaks Loads of Sites

  Patrick Altoft

  5 Dec 2011 | 6:20 am

  A little known feature of the latest iOS 5 software for the iPhone is that it disables cookies by default. I wasn’t aware of this until yesterday when I tried to book a hotel and was trying to browse three of the largest travel websites – Premier Inn, Late Rooms and Travelodge and none of them were working. All these sites detect your user agent, set a cookie and then display the mobile version of the site. In iOS 5 this results in a redirect loop which I only fixed by enabling cookies in the settings, something that most users wouldn’t know they needed to do. I’m…

• How to Build Conversions Using SEO – Slides from Conversion Conference

  Patrick Altoft

  1 Dec 2011 | 3:14 am

  Yesterday I was speaking at Conversion Conference about building conversions using SEO. The slides are below. How to Build Conversions Using SEO View more presentations from Patrick Altoft Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisationHow to Build Conversions Using SEO – Slides from Conversion Conference

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  Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon

• Great marketing, small marketing: How it all fits

  Ian

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:05 pm

  I did a presentation today at Emerging Media Conference: How marketing can change the world. I’ve distilled it down to the essential bits here. It’s not the best organized ever, but it covers the essentials. Give it a read: Streeeetchhh First, a quick mental stretching exercise: “Marketing” is not “Selling stuff”. “Marketing” is: Communications created to deliver and promote concepts and offerings that have value. Maybe we’re convincing our kids to eat broccoli. Or we’re trying to convince someone to go out on a date. Or we’re…

• Google Analytics Tutorial: Install (updated)

  Ian

  20 Jan 2012 | 1:27 pm

  I noticed that my original Google Analytics video tutorial is a wee bit out of date. Like, 4 years out of date. So, here’s a new basic install video:

• SOPA, and content thieves: They both suck

  ian

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:25 pm

  Watching the argument over online piracy unfold in the US is like watching chimpanzees drive a car. They fight over direction but they don’t give a crap if they take the rest of us off a goddamned cliff with them. Here’s my problem with both sides in this Greek tragedy: SOPA = stupid If it passes, SOPA will be a total failure: It’s written by a Republican congressman who, as near as I can tell, doesn’t own a computer. The guy violates copyright law on his own web site. Dude. Did you even know you had a web site? It’s being pushed by big companies who don’t…

• Webinar number 1: Internet marketing, content, and all that jazz

  Ian

  16 Jan 2012 | 5:23 pm

  Portent’s starting a free webinar series, presented by yours truly. The first one is January 31, 2012 at 11 AM Pacific time. I’ll be doing a deep dive into inbound search content social media internet marketing strategy: The role of search engines, social media and other channels in your internet marketing campaign. What ‘inbound marketing’ really is. How to use content to drive marketing. How to use analytics to direct your efforts. How it all fits together. These webinars are free, as in beer. You do have to register, though, so I’ll forever have your e-mail in…

• In internet marketing, be significant, or be roadkill

  ian

  13 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  You send an e-mail to 40,000 people, and get 1 response. Or, you run a Groupon deal that brings 1,000 new customers, who never buy from you again. Wonder why? You got everyone’s attention. They just don’t care. Now you’ve got a choice: Rend your garments, tear your hair and whine about how stupid the average consumer is these days. Or, you can realize something: Attention does not equal significance Getting attention is nice. It gives you a proto-audience: Folks who might stay to listen. Now, though, you have to show them you’re significant. That’ll get everyone…

• 

  HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

• 5 Tricks for Generating Traffic When Nobody's at Work

  Melissa Miller

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:30 pm

  Are you doing anything this weekend to generate traffic to your website? If you’re a B2B marketer, chances are you’ve probably asked yourself at some point: How do I keep marketing effectively when nobody is in the office? You want to continue to drive traffic and leads, but you don't know exactly how. The wrong thing to do is assume that nobody is listening on holidays or during weekends. Depending on your audience, this could actually be a good time for a new blog post, video release, or email. Data from a recent Xobni survey shows that people are still wired into work during…

• What a Top-Notch Lead Management Program Looks Like

  Meghan Keaney Anderson

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:45 pm

  Walk into any active sales room, and it’s easy to tell how time-intensive most sales operations are. To make the hours spent worthwhile, it’s important to ensure that your sales team is only talking to the most qualified leads. Lead management is a strategy and set of corresponding tools that help companies filter out unqualified leads and better understand the buying cycle of their good leads. When executed well, lead management makes your marketing team more effective, your sales team more precise, and your leads happier. Lead management programs vary from company…

• Facebook Timeline Likely Coming to Business Pages Near You

  Pamela Vaughan

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:30 pm

  Earlier this week, Facebook announced it will finally be rolling out Facebook Timeline to all users in the next few weeks, replacing the design of existing personal profile pages. While Timeline won't directly affect the look of your Facebook business page (yet), the rollout does have some powerful implications for marketers. You can read more about those implications here. Timeline Design Likely Coming to Facebook Business Pages But, notice how we said yet? That's right, while Facebook business pages aren't affected by the current Timeline rollout, we have good reason to believe that, in…

• 12 Critical Elements Every Homepage Must Have [Infographic]

  Jessica Meher

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:20 am

  If you’re considering a website redesign or are wondering how to generate more leads from your website, there are several critical elements you must never forget to include.  Let’s first take a look at the homepage. Ah yes, “thee page of all pages.” It’s undoubtedly one of the most important areas on a website. That’s understandable; it’s a company’s virtual front door, and, in most cases, it gets the majority of the traffic. While homepages generally get the most love, I find it surprising that so many do a poor job of generating leads or…

• The 7 Slides You Need for an Epic Monthly Marketing Report

  Rick Burnes

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Here's a challenge for all you marketers who are on top of your game: How do you make sure your marketing team is taken seriously within your own company? One important step you should take is publishing a thorough, thoughtful, quantitative monthly report on your marketing team's impact. For as long as there’s been marketing, marketers have struggled to show their impact. But today, there's no need to struggle. Today, it's simple to collect the data you need to show how your marketing investments are generating revenue for your business. You just have to pull together the right…

• 

  Local SEO Guide

• The Power of SEO for Startups

  Andrew Shotland

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:58 am

  I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Google+ and sometimes it’s nice to remind myself that good old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes SEO still works, and can be critical to start-ups trying to break into a market.  To wit, here’s the organic traffic chart for a start-up that has a great service but had little traction in Google…until this past week… UPDATE: Their organic traffic jumped by 50% yesterday. #Krazy

• How To Get +1s For Your Local Business

  Andrew Shotland

  23 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  And while I’m on the subject, Stever has a great post up on some tips for Encouraging Google +1 Votes for Local Business Websites. Key point for unsuspecting SMBs to take note of: “Forget the new schemes popping up to buy hundreds of plus 1 votes. Those will be meaningless to a local business as it is very likely nobody in that network are local to that business. That and it is likely a manufactured network just to sell +1’s in bulk so again the people within the circles of those accounts are not likely to be local either.” Check out this Kelowna painting contractor for a…

• Google+ Needs Tight Local Networks To Succeed

  Andrew Shotland

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:53 am

  SearchEngineLand just published Google Plus Connections Are The New Link, some thoughts of mine on how local search co’s and SMBs may try to leverage Google Search Plus Your World to improve local SEO. After rereading it, it seems clear that as more and more organic results are deemed to have “local intent”, the only way that Google Plus content stays relevant is for users to have tight local networks. If that doesn’t happen, Google’s own quality algorithm should purge these results from the SERPs, because they will have low click-through/relevance, either…

• Google Results Suck? Try Google Plus?

  Andrew Shotland

  20 Jan 2012 | 4:41 pm

    I don’t recall seeing these little prompts in the search results before.

• Google Plus SEO Jujitsu

  Andrew Shotland

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:28 am

    A few years ago on these august pages I did a post on Reputation Management Jujitsu as a way of obtaining links by saying nice things about companies with poor online reputations. The idea being that these companies are eager to link to blogs saying positive things about their brand. Now that Google Search Plus Your World has begun its putsch and Google Plus connections have become the new link, it has got me thinking about the ripple effect of tactics we will start to see play out as SEOs and social media douches consultants (“SMDs”) start to play around in there. And I…

• 

  Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

• The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book. Change or Perish.

  Avinash Kaushik

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:26 am

  It is the season to be predicting the future, but that is almost always a career-limiting move. So I'm not going to do that. It is a lot easier to predict the present. So I'm not going to do that either. Rather, I'm going to share a clump of realities/rules garnered from the present to help ready you for the predictable near future . Now here is the great part… if you follow these rules and act on these insights I believe you'll be significantly better prepared for the unpredictable future. Awesome right? Now here's another surprise: These rules/insights/mind…

• Best Web Metrics / KPIs for a Small, Medium or Large Sized Business

  Avinash Kaushik

  12 Dec 2011 | 4:11 am

  We have access to more data than God wants anyone to have. Thus it is not surprising that we feel overwhelmed, and rather than being data driven we just get paralyzed. Life does not have to be that scary. In fact a data driven life is sexiest digital life you can imagine. In this blog post we are going to bring the sexyback. I am going to attempt to significantly simply your life by recommending the critical few metrics you should use to analyze performance of your digital marketing campaigns and website. You'll be able to quickly go from "omg what can I do!" to "omg what…

• Smarter Data Analysis of Google's https (not provided) change: 5 Steps

  Avinash Kaushik

  21 Nov 2011 | 4:22 am

  It is astonishingly common that we are asked to analyze the impossible. In perhaps a career-limiting move I'm going to try to do that today (and for a controversial topic to boot!). In this post about an important Google change, I want you to focus less on the data and focus more on the methodology. And – so important – I want you to help me with your ideas of how we can do this impossible analysis better, in the complete absence of data :). So please share your ideas via comments and let's together make a smarter ecosystem. On board? Let's go…. In an effort…

• Data Analysis 101: Seven Simple Mistakes That Limit Your Salary

  Avinash Kaushik

  31 Oct 2011 | 4:42 am

  Data analysis is not easy. It takes years to get good at it, and once you get good at it you realize how much more there is to learn. That is part of the joy. You are always learning. You are always growing. This blogpost is a collection of tips I share with my friends who are just starting out. Each tip is a "simple" mistake that is easily avoided. My hope is that you'll skip them if you are aware of them, and move on to making more important valuable mistakes. :) My plan is to wrap each tip with additional observations, context that will be of value even to those who have…

• Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value

  Avinash Kaushik

  10 Oct 2011 | 5:01 am

  I am going to break one of my unspoken cardinal rules: Only write about real problems and measurement that is actually possible in the real world. I am going to break the second part of the rule. I am going to define a way for you to think about measuring social media, and you can't actually easily measure what I am going to recommend. So why break the rule? Social media is evolving at an incredible pace. Most of us have no idea how to participate optimally in this unique channel – we are doing TV on Twitter (breaks my heart). The impact on the data side of the ecosystem is that…

• 

  Portent

• Search Ranking Factors 2012 Discussion

  Tom Schmitz

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:58 pm

  Search engine results have changed dramatically. Today, which websites get top rankings depend on very different signals than in the past. So much so that what we once considered the whole of SEO is now only a small portion. Here are some of the factors affecting search engine optimization today. On-Site SEO On-site SEO includes keyword selection, website architecture, hub pages, internal linking and content optimization. This is one of the original parts of search engine optimization. On-site SEO is vital, after all, if words do not appear on your website why should you rank for them?

• A View From New York City’s SOPA/PIPA Protest

  Welles Wiley

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:21 pm

  Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaks out against Internet censorship January 18th was a big day in the fight against Internet censorship legislation. As you may have noticed, major websites like Wikipedia and Reddit took their content offline to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These two pieces of legislation would make dramatic changes to the Internet, allowing media companies to block access to sites that host copyrighted material. In New York City, I was able to attend a large rally outside the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer…

• Before Jumping Into Social Media 2.x, Do SEO 1.0

  Tom Schmitz

  16 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pm

  Would you be surprised to learn that I’ve been writing Google Search+ recommendations and how-to guides for Portent clients this week? I plan to share my findings here on the blog, but before I dive into the new stuff I feel that it is important to cover some old ground first. Have you laid a good foundation of site architecture, web design, keyword mapping, content creation and link building for your website? I am writing of the basics, laying a solid foundation for visitors and SEO on your website. Before you go diving into social media 2.x you must have a Visually appealing website…

• How to Add Multiple Administrators to Google+ Pages

  Doug Antkowiak

  13 Jan 2012 | 7:04 am

  In late December, Google announced the ability to delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a Google+ page, yet Google forgot to tell us one little secret. How the hell do you grant admin access to multiple users? If you’ve already created your Google+ page, use this simple tutorial to help others join your team. Add a Google+ Page Admin in 4 Easy Steps Step 1: Log into Your Google+ Profile Click on the page link under your profile name. This will open a dropdown list of pages you operate, including your personal profile. From here, click Manage Your Pages. As a side note,…

• Utilizing Facebook Insights to Identify Potential

  Ryan Moothart

  11 Jan 2012 | 10:30 am

  When you run an ad campaign in Facebook to get more fans for your business page, you’re able to analyze your performance using Facebook Insights. Recently, Facebook completely removed the old version of Insights and made their new version mandatory. If you’re not familiar with the new Insights, they feature more in-depth and granular information useful to analyzing user interaction. Not only can this information be used to measure ad campaign performance, it can be used to identify potential areas to improve that performance. Below is a list of some of the new features and how they can be…

• 

  Posts from the Econsultancy blog

• Techmeme: this is what happens when aggregators aggregate aggregators

  Patricio Robles

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:03 pm

  For many in the tech community, Techmeme is one of the top places to turn when you want to discover the latest news. Launched in 2005, Techmeme was at first automated, but since 2008, it has employed human editors to curate the best tech news on the web. The idea: human involvement is necessary to filter the wheat from the chaff. Which seems like a good idea given just how much chaff there is on the web. But is it working for Techmeme?Recently, former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy launched a new blog, PandoDaily. She raised money from a cadre of some of Silicon Valley's most influential…

• US job moves: Blackberry, Nokia, Comcast, Virgin America

  Heather Taylor

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:20 am

  As this week's news is dominated with the news of another founder splitting ways with his company, we're reporting moves in the US by RIM, Virgin America, Nokia, Comcast and Zynga amongst others.Did you hear of any big moves that will affect our industry that we didn't catch? Let us know.Research in Motion co-chief executives, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, have stepped down to make way for COO Thorsten Heins to become president and chief executive.Nokia's chief designer Marko Ahtisaari has been promoted from Senior VP to Executive Vice President, Design. This move comes after the success…

• Kermit takes over Disney's Twitter feed for film promotion

  David Moth

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  Kermit the Frog took over Disney UK’s Twitter feed yesterday to promote the new Muppet movie. As part of Disney's marketing around the film’s London premiere fans could post questions using the hashtag #AskKermit. Hundreds of people took part, including actor Stephen Fry, and the hashtag was in the top ten trends on Thursday.Kermit tweeted responses back to fans and also posted personalised videos on YouTube as he toured London for various promotional events. Using Twitter as a marketing tool is nothing new, but allowing fans to interact with an iconic character like Kermit in…

• G20 economy predicted to hit $4.2tn by 2016

  David Moth

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:25 am

  The G20’s digital economy is set to double to $4.2tn by 2016, according to the Boston Consulting Group. The Google-commissioned study found that key drivers behind the increase will be the growth of mobile internet, the popularity of social media and the continued strength of emerging markets.However the main factor will be the dramatic increase in the number of web users, which it predicts will increase from 1.9bn in 2010 to 3bn in 2016 – this accounts for around 45% of the world’s population. Within the report, IBM predicts that by 2015 1tn devices will be connected to the…

• What we've been reading this week: UK edition

  Vikki Chowney

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:05 am

  Here are the stories and links we’ve tweeted, posted, passed around the UK office and shaken our heads at. Check back later to get the skinny on what our US team has been reading too.   Men Not Allowed: The First Ever Female Social Network Belinda Parmar’s delicate dissection of ‘women only’ social network Luluvise. Originally posted 26-Jan-12   Europe proposes a ‘right to be forgotten’ Arstechnica discusses the EU’s reform of the EU's data protection rules. Originally posted 26-Jan-12   Observations on #savetheintern Tom Watson…

• 

  Fathom Online Marketing Blog

• Privacy Policies & You

  Matt Insley

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Last spring, Google AdWords announced some policy changes that would affect all AdWords advertisers. This particular policy change dealt with privacy policies. Google stated to better protect people’s personal and financial information, a clear, accessible disclosure must be presented to visitors before they submitted any personal information.  So our account teams did our due diligence and went through our clients' landing pages to review them and see if they were going to be compliant to Google’s new policy change. Fast-forward to early December…. I log in to one of my accounts and…

• College Students and QR Codes Don’t Mix

  Karen Cover

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:07 pm

  Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post about what it’s like to not scan QR codes since I don’t have a smartphone. But recently I discovered that not having a smartphone might not be what’s really keeping my general demographic from scanning QR codes. I’m a fairly recent college grad, and on campus I never really heard much about QR codes. As it turns out, that’s pretty normal for college students, according to a survey done by Archrival Youth Marketing. Archrival worked with 24 colleges in the U.S. and surveyed over 500 students about QR codes, and they compiled their findings in…

• Why a Killer Headline Just Isn’t Enough

  Angela Verlei

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:15 am

  You’ve spent hours deliberating over the title of your next blog post. You’ve taken polls among your friends, tried it out on your co-workers, and even thought about having it tattooed on your arm. But even with a killer headline for your next blog post, you could still lose your audience if you don’t have a killer introduction paragraph. So, now that you have an amazing title, leverage it by making your introduction paragraph just as captivating. Try one of the following five techniques to improve your blog introductions: Ask a Question While it may seem cliché, opening your blog post…

• Blogging to Broadcast Your Expertise

  Daiv Whaley

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:53 pm

  At Fathom we have several education clients who have programs involved with fashion merchandising and fashion design, so I guess this blog post is for you, fashion students. Here's a motivational story on the power of online marketing - particulalrly blogging - as a way of establishing your industry authority among your peers. Tavi Gevinson started her first blog when she was eleven years old and quickly gained the attention of adults involved in the industry - including entertaining fashionistas Courtney Love and Lady Gaga and Italian designer Miuccia Prada, among others. By the old age of…

• Is Your Content Crap?

  Caroline Bogart

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:51 am

  It’s happened to everyone at least once. You arrive at a website and can’t find the information you need because the content is just awful. It’s hard to read, it doesn’t say anything or it’s so overloaded with SEO tactics that the meaning is completely lost. Before you get complaints about the content on your website, here are some questions you should ask yourself to find out if your content is crap. Have you read it out loud? If the content sounds awful when you read it out loud, it’s not going to sound any better if someone reads it silently. What’s one of the main causes of…

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  Redfly Online Marketing, Dublin, Ireland

• AdWords Coupon Codes – Common Problems and Questions

  Sinead

  1 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pm

  Google recently sent out promotional coupon codes to all of its Google Analytics users for use in AdWords, as a way to encourage website owners to try out AdWords.   Often third parties such as web hosting companies or other online businesses will offer similar coupon codes (often these will come with their own set of terms of conditions, so please read the small print). For example Blacknight currently offers a variety of different AdWords vouchers when you sign up for hosting services with them. The primary purpose of these types of coupons is to introduce AdWords to new users, to…

• The Easy Way To Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Website & Get More Customers

  Sinead

  20 Dec 2011 | 9:50 am

  Many website owners install Google Analytics in an attempt to gauge the success or failure of their online ventures. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the data available, and to ignore the truly valuable statistics and the relationships between them. It is also very easy to focus too heavily on metrics such as unique visitors or traffic sources alone. Often what we should be really looking at is ways of improving our websites rather than how to drive more traffic to them. Luckily there is an easy way to use Google Analytics to delve inside the behaviour of your…

• How to Maximize Your Click-Through Rate and Add More Control to Your Landing Pages Using Ad Sitelinks

  Sinead

  20 Jul 2011 | 4:35 am

  In the organic search listings you’re probably familiar with Sitelinks. They are the collection of links that appear below the search result for your website, and they link to the main pages of your site. Sitelinks are there to help users navigate your site. They are created by analyzing the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time. Though they are generated automatically, if you are unhappy with these automatic links you can delete some or all of them using Google Webmaster Tools.Depending on how specific the search term is these Sitelinks are sometimes…

• Google Global Extension For Chrome

  Dave Davis

  6 Jul 2010 | 1:25 pm

  Last week, due to popular demand, we quietly released the beta version of our Google Global extension. We have had some really encouraging feedback from you guys like “The only reason I’m still using Firefox is because of your extension”. Well now you can finally let Firefox go :) The extension, while still in beta is a little more limited than the Firefox extension as a result of our lack of access to the new API. This means that country selection in search results will not be available through the context menu until the next release. For now, the region selection and…

• View From The Other Side Of The May Day Update

  Dave Davis

  1 Jun 2010 | 8:52 am

  There has been a lot of chatter, complaints and the inevitable “let’s start a class action lawsuit against Google” over the past few weeks in relation to an algorithm change dubbed the “MayDay Update”. I wont go into much detail here about all of the complaints or absurd theories, but you can read the main source of this over on the WMW thread here. Last week Vanessa Fox wrote an article on these updates and speculated as to what happened. While most dismissed her speculations, I believe she was right on the money. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that…

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  hobo

• Award Winning Think Visibility 7 – March 3rd 2012 (Leeds)

  Shaun Anderson

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:40 am

  I will be propping up the bar and keeping my room in order at Award Winning Think Visibility 7 – March 3rd 2012 (Leeds). You should go – it is quite excellent and lots of REAL experienced nice people to meet at the conference and the parties. Wikipedia down, Reddit down, wordpress.com blacked out, there was [...] Check out - Award Winning Think Visibility 7 – March 3rd 2012 (Leeds) This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners: Hobo SEO Book For Beginners Hobo Linkbuilding Guide For Beginners Search Engine…

• Topseos Complaints Awards 2012

  Shaun Anderson

  17 Jan 2012 | 7:47 pm

  (This will be my last ever post on Topseos. I have also been told I am not allowed to play on Twitter today as I have excel spreadsheets to work.) When I wrote my post about Tops SEOs recently (which was retweeted some very influential seo) and questioned the reporting by the Drum Magazine in Scotland, [...] Check out - Topseos Complaints Awards 2012 This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners: Hobo SEO Book For Beginners Hobo Linkbuilding Guide For Beginners Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally shared by Hobo SEO…

• Lady Gaga on Google Plus

  Shaun Anderson

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:20 am

  Marketing Land have posted that Lady Gaga is on Google Plus – it really might be time to get on there, if you are not. Although – don’t try searching Google for it – at the moment anyway – well, I couldn’t find it. Ironic – but then again Google does get a kicking for manipulating the [...] Check out - Lady Gaga on Google Plus This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners: Hobo SEO Book For Beginners Hobo Linkbuilding Guide For Beginners Search Engine Optimisation by Hobo! Originally…

• Opinion: TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via The Drum Magazine

  Shaun Anderson

  16 Jan 2012 | 1:14 pm

  TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via @thedrum hobo.im/xBQQzf — Shaun Anderson (@Hobo_Web) January 16, 2012   Man. I was so disappointed when I saw the Drum Magazine today – surely recognised as one of Scotland’s – and the UK’s –  top marketing and advertising publications – at least it used to be (or I had that impression) [...] Check out - Opinion: TopSEOs Sewage Leaks To Scotland via The Drum Magazine This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners: Hobo SEO Book For Beginners Hobo…

• Ifttt – Automatically Post Blog Posts To Twitter, Linkedin & Facebook

  Shaun Anderson

  15 Jan 2012 | 6:51 am

  IFTTT stands for If This, Then That, and the name is practically self-explanatory. If one of the several triggers you setup happens, then the service activates whatever multiple commands you designate When I publish a post on Hobo, ideally I want it to automatically be shared to the Hobo Facebook page, Linkedin, Google Plus and Twitter profiles. [...] Check out - Ifttt – Automatically Post Blog Posts To Twitter, Linkedin & Facebook This REALLY IS just about your last chance to download your free seo ebook and linkbuilding guide for beginners: Hobo SEO Book For Beginners Hobo…

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  ion interactive blog

• 7 Ways to Generate High-quality Leads with Content Marketing

  ion

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  This is a guest post by Megan Leap. Megan is Online Marketing Manager at MarketingProfs, where she manages marketing programs for PRO Membership. She’s also a LiveBall customer and conversion optimization enthusiast. Fill your lead funnel through content marketing!Content is a critical component of great B2B marketing today. Content can help position your organization as thought leaders, nurture prospects over time, and best of all, it can generate high-quality leads, too. Without any further adieu, here are 7 ways to generate high-quality leads with content marketing. 1. Create…

• 7 Ways to Improve B2B Lead Nurturing

  Anna Talerico

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  A great lead nurturing campaign can go a long way in moving your prospects further down the sales process. Based on our experience managing B2B lead nurturing campaigns over the past few years, here are 7 key tips to help you close more leads, faster. 1. Match Your Email Content According to Phases in the Sales Process When a lead first gets added to your lead nurturing program, start the relationship—or courting process—by mailing them best practices information, quick tips—any kind of content that allows your subscribers to get to know and trust you. Then, once they start…

• Progressive Profiling: Who, What & Why?

  Jessica Collier

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Who can use progressive profiling? Marketing managers driving prospects to landing pages from email marketing campaigns Must be passing lead information into a CRM and or marketing automation system (Eloqua, Marketo, etc.) What is progressive profiling? Using landing page forms to build lead profiles and qualification over time A few multiple choice questions are asked on the landing page each time a lead returns for nurture fulfillment Helps build relationships with prospects during nurture process   Why is progressive profiling important? Reduces number of form fields on…

• Landing page testing 101: A/B testing

  Jessica Collier

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  I’ve said it numerous times before in this blog and I’ll say it again: If you’re not A/B testing your landing pages, you need to start – today! A/B testing isn’t an afterthought, and it’s something you should do more than once a year. We’re huge proponents of testing and believe it is a process that should be applied consistently to every landing page. So let’s go over why A/B testing is so awesome. The basics of A/B testing A/B testing goes by a few other names, like split testing, but no matter what you call it, it’s…

• 7 ways to improve content marketing conversions

  Alexandra Tambellini

  20 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Yesterday, we posted a great list of places to find content inspiration, and hopefully it helped you come up with a whole list of great new ideas. Creating new content can take a little time, so in the meantime, here are seven ways you can boost conversions for the content you already have.  1. Use specific landing pages Whether you’re promoting your content through email, social media or SEM, the ad for your content piece should lead to a landing page specific to that piece.  This is especially important if you’re using content as part of a lead generation…

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  MediaPost | Search Insider

• The Death of Google's Urchin Analytics -- And Why We All Should Care

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:18 pm

  Last week Google officially announced it would be retiring its Urchin Software web analytics technology -- a move that was a long time coming.

• What Is An Agency's Role?

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:23 am

  Last week, I was talking to someone about what role a digital agency would play in the future. We went down all the usual paths and came up with the usual answers, but afterward the question still lingered. What is our role in the future? I'm reasonably certain it won't be the same as our role in the past.

• It's Not Over Yet: Why You Should Still Be Concerned About SOPA And PIPA

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:32 am

  As some of you may know, I am on the international board of directors of SEMPO, and recently we weighed in on the debate about SOPA and PIPA in the House and Senate respectively. We became aware of this issue going back several months, and we sent the association's position to key individuals in Congress. The good news is that Congress listened, as many direct responses were received with regards to our position. But the rest of this column involves some of my personal thoughts on what has transpired over the last few months with these bills.

• Search Marketing And The 'Do' Tendency

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:08 am

  Bing introduced a new ad campaign last night during the NFC Championship between the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants. The campaign tag -- "Bing is for doing" -- is very similar to a campaign rolled out last year by Lenovo ("For Those Who Do"). Both campaigns are focused on those who aren't just passive consumers of media or information, but who make it their mission to get something done.

• Embrace Your Inner 'Screw-Up'

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:48 am

  Humans hate making mistakes. But the fact is, making mistakes is an essential part of being human. Somehow, we have to learn to live on the edge of this paradox. For digital marketers, our entire industry is balanced on this particular precarious precipice. There are a few rules of thumb to "screwing up" successfully:

• 

  Marketing Technology Blog

• Free Speech Doesn’t Protect Your Reputation

  Douglas Karr

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:18 pm

  Sam Montgomery is a reader of the Marketing Technology Blog and contacted me regarding a story of a young football talent named Yuri Wright. Yuri was actively being recruited by Michigan State… up until some folks read his tweets. The tweets are displayed at Chat Sports and not safe for work (NSFW)… just know that they’re pretty vulgar. Yuri Wright, the 4-star CB from New Jersey, was once though to be headed to Michigan in the 2012 class. Earlier this month, the Michigan coaching staff took a deeper look into the prospect after a concerned alumnus sent the school verbatim…

• 27% of Marketers Have No Tablet Plans… Yet!

  Douglas Karr

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:46 am

  We love having a great sponsor like Zoomerang and their free polling software to figure out what and how marketers feel about both our content and to provide insight into what strategies are deploying. Our latest poll asked about plans for marketers when it comes to the tablet market. Last year, Forrester predicted huge growth in the ereader and tablet market – and the market produced. It didn’t produce with simple sales, but the aggressive discounting of ereaders and tablets are making them more affordable than mobile phones! What does that mean for your organization? Thankfully,…

• Enable Authorship and Publishing Link in WordPress

  Douglas Karr

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:28 pm

  I keep telling folks I’d share how we’re integrating authorship microdata to produce search result rich snippets. It’s working well for our clients in increasing their SERP CTRs) so I figured I’d document it here for WordPress sites. There are two pieces to this… and the two elements are not related. The authorship data is now being displayed in Search Engine Results Pages. I have not seen publisher info displayed yet… but I’m sure it will be! Publisher Google Plus now has a verification system where a publisher of a site can point to their Google+…

• Infographic: Small Business Social Cheat Sheet

  Douglas Karr

  24 Jan 2012 | 5:52 pm

  I love my peeps over at Column Five, but I think they may have tipped a few many watching reruns of Diggnation. Digg? Really? By any stretch of the imagination, Digg‘s grave has been Dugg and StumbleUpon is the one planting flowers. Too soon? Sorry folks… when the audience leaves, the social app dies. It’s social media evolution. But wait… really… we missed LinkedIn, too? Google Business? Are you kidding me? Perhaps it was something a little stronger than beer. Alright… we’ve made enough fun of the project manager on this infographic for Flowtown.

• Robby Slaughter of Slaughter Development on MTB Radio

  Jenn Lisak

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:16 pm

  We are proud to announce that we will be having Robby Slaughter, trouble maker of social media, of Slaughter Development on the Marketing Tech Blog Radio Show this Friday, January 27, at 3 p.m. EST. On the show, we will be talking about the meaning of “productivity” (it’s not what most people think), the connection between online marketing and productivity, and why companies need outside experts for fundamental work. Robby Slaughter is a workflow and productivity expert. His focus is helping organizations and individuals to become more efficient, more effective and more…

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  Toronto SEO Services - Local Search Marketing

• Will Facebook Move Ahead of Google in Search?

  SEO Company Geek

  1 Jan 2012 | 4:54 am

  If there are more people like this, then I guess so!

• Who is Searching Google?

  SEO Company Geek

  14 Dec 2011 | 1:57 pm

  I was trying to think of a creative place to hide my extra house key but apparently Google searchers are querying for something else.

• Calls to Action – How Much is Too Much?

  SEO Company Geek

  12 Dec 2011 | 9:16 am

  Oh,Pick Me! One of the first things I learned early in my career is that when you are selling something, you will never make a sale unless you ask for the money!  Just like the famous expression from Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money”. So we all agree that every website and preferably every page of a website should have some sort of call to action in order to convert a visitor to becoming a customer. But when is it too much?  I came across the below web-page and even though I am involved in digital marketing on a daily basis, I was overloaded and clicked the back button within…

• World Wide Viral Results

  SEO Company Geek

  1 Dec 2011 | 10:52 am

  Here is an update to my previous post!  Traffic has been down to 20k visits per day for the last two days but the buzz is still alive!  I actually heard my fake news story on the radio (102.1 The Edge) on the way to work this morning!! It seems this story has gone viral WORLD-WIDE!  The smoking gun has called it out as fake after some research (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/poop-tattoo-story-is-crap-8764319)  and same with snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/photos/bodymods/poo.asp) One story even called my web site sketchy but hey, it was all in good fun and it will be interesting to…

• Viral Results Can Be Fun

  SEO Company Geek

  25 Nov 2011 | 11:13 am

  I put together a fake news story last week and it seems someone posted it to Reddit.com and then the fun began!  I got a phone call from my host at around 8pm and he said my website might be under a DoS attack because it was receiving 100+ http requests per second!!  Needless to say my poor shared hosting account crashed and my host was working hard to keep it live! Here are the results so far The website usually gets 200-300 visits a day.  The 86k requests I could not serve kinda sucks but I was not really expecting this to go as viral as it did.  I will update this after the 24 hour…

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  Paul Roekle

• Niche Marketing Strategy – Enhance Your Internet Marketing Niche Success

  admin

  4 Jan 2012 | 2:50 pm

  Niche Marketing Strategy – Enhance Your Internet Marketing Niche Success Technological advancements will favorably impact ymca upland advertising on the internet as broadband internet access permeates more locations. Internet search can be increasingly wise and location-aware, mobile device usage can become more widespread, along with media-rich and potent applications and also the personalization associated with online client interaction using businesses may widen and deepen. Individuals who visit the anxious ymca upland website get the chance to post their own comments and request…

• Internet Marketing Guide And Tips

  admin

  4 Jan 2012 | 7:13 am

  Internet Marketing Guide And Tips Affiliate marketer marketing is a method of producing funds on the internet whereby the publisher tend to be rewarded with regard to helping a business by marketing their upland ymca merchandise, service or perhaps web site. It’s marketing and advertising apply in which a organization rewards one particular or far more affiliates for every visitor or consumer caused by the online advertiser’s advertising initiatives. Examples incorporate rewards internet sites, where customers are paid with money or presents, for the finishing of an offer, and the…

• Booze & Muscle Advancement – 5 Means Alcohol Can affect Muscle Gets

  Paul

  13 Nov 2011 | 5:50 am

  Booze & Muscle Advancement – 5 Means Alcohol Can affect Muscle Gets Author name: Deserio H.C. Campanaro But, if you would like build a lot more muscle, drink lots of alcohol could have a bad impact upon your efforts. Protein activity is when proteins join together to proteins. Excessive hav can slow wealth attraction down by as much as 20%. 2. Ladies Trainers: only some trainers usually are men. There are a number of women on the markets. There’s no solid rule you must work that has a trainer of one’s gender, but that to discuss any misconceptions you’ll have…

• Simple Ways to Know Your Target Audience Inside Out

  Paul

  13 Nov 2011 | 3:43 am

  Simple Ways to Know Your Target Audience Inside Out Failing to gain some depth of understanding of who your target audience is will be the ultimate nail in your business’ coffin. So that is why today we are talking all about your target audience and how you can find them. You should give serious thought to surveying your email list, if you have one. As you know, when you get valuable data from surveys, then you will know and understand them just a little bit more. No list, no problem – you can find do it yourself survey services all the way up to full service businesses. Of course…

• Worker Criminal History Check The simplest way to Hire the Finest

  Paul

  12 Nov 2011 | 6:26 pm

  Worker Criminal History Check The simplest way to Hire the Finest Just lately carrying out staff qualifications check out the corporation became popular on the list of world of business It is recently done by the majority of the employers as they quite simply peace of mind in organizations as well as to make it sure that seek the services of those ethics and with top quality of service Much the same way would happen to your online business if you would like your staff experience occupation qualifications check This is one way There are not many methods to be able to conduct employee…

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  Amplify Interactive

• 6 Reasons to Bid on Branded PPC Keywords

  Ben

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  If you’ve managed a PPC campaign before you’ve no doubt heard this question: “Why are we be bidding on branded keywords? We’re ranked #1″. Sometimes we’ll just get a directive when marketers think they’re being smart “Once we’re ranked #1, we’ll stop spending money on these keywords”. On the surface this seems to make sense; if you’re already ranked #1, why would you pay for the same keyword? We’ve answered this question over and over again. Every situation calls for it’s own solution and you should test to…

• Jessica’s Social Media “Likes” – 01/17/2012

  Jessica Ward

  17 Jan 2012 | 11:32 am

  In this post of “Jessica’s Social Media ‘Likes’” – Search Plus Your World, Embedded Tweets, Shareable Content Tips, and Social Editorial Calendars. Get ready to “like!” SEOmoz: Why Every Marketer Now Needs a Google+ Strategy Rank Fishkin shares why he thinks Google is forcing businesses to use Google+. His reasons why you need to have Google+: 1. Google+ in Search Results 2. Personalization and Social Results 3. Increase Google+ Adoption 4. Richness of snippets / markup 5. Web Spam and Quality Signals 6. Biasing to social / Google+ in Search…

• Best Amplify Posts of 2011

  Ben

  13 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Not to brag – but we put out some great content in 2011. Our content was SO great that our year over year site traffic grew by 62%, and organic search referrals to our site climbed by 71% vs last year! These achievements are due to the work we’ve done on our blog. So please – leave a comment and help me give the team a big pat on the back for all their hard work! Here’s a recap of our most popular posts from last year – check it out, you may have missed one. Top 10 Posts of 2011 Ordered by number of pageviews. There’s a pretty strong correlation with the…

• Christian Reads… (So You Don’t Have To) – SEO Edition – January 2012

  Christian Bullock

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:31 pm

  Welcome to another edition of Christian Reads… (So You Don’t Have To) – SEO Edition. This is the first edition in 2012! Exciting! My new years resolution was to curate some kickass SEO content and hit these roundups hard for you folks. So without further ado, here’s some good SEO news & articles that I’ve been reading: Creating Content: Staying Creative & Becoming Search Engine Marketing Wise View this news item Shameless self-plug, but this post rocks. I created this post specifically for folks who are content creators to show them in a fun way that hey,…

• Do B2B Marketing Plans in 2012 Involve More or Less Social Media?

  Ben

  9 Jan 2012 | 11:30 am

  This is a guest post from Amplify Interactive’s partner at Business.com. This is the first guest post we’ve put up on our site. We plan to bring more good content onto our blog from partners, colleagues, and experts. What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Does Your B2B Marketing Plan for 2012 Involve More or Less Social Media? With 2012 kicking off, it is important for B2B marketers to have a fix on whether or not social media will play an important role in their marketing efforts over the next 12 months. For some marketers, social media has already paid major dividends…

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  SearchBlogger

• Does Your Contact Page Have These Six Essential Things?

  Jamie

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  The way people do business online has changed a lot since the internet began all those years ago. Company’s contact pages used to be very basic, but there are more elements you should include nowadays, because your customers expect them. Below is a quick guide to six essential things every website contact page should have. Links to social media profiles In this era of social media, potential customers may want to ‘tweet’ you rather than send you an email. It’s a good idea to have links to your Facebook, Twitter Google+ and LinkedIn profiles (assuming you have accounts on these) so…

• How to Improve Your About Us Page

  Jamie

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:57 am

  Spare a thought for the people who take the time to read ‘About Us’ pages. They click on the page title hoping to find out something interesting about a company, but tend to be greeted with some wishy-washy text the site owner thought made them sound ‘professional’ Find out how to improve your ‘About Us’ page and make it strike a chord with your online visitors. Get personal Too many corporate websites make the mistake of being impersonal online. An ‘About Us’ page that says “we do this, we do that etc” doesn’t tell your visitors anything about you or the main people…

• How Outsourcing Your Online Marketing Can Save You Money

  Jamie

  20 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  Working with small business owners every day, I’m often told by people they want to do all their own online marketing in order to save money. While that may seem logical, outsourcing SEO, PPC, copywriting etc can actually save you a lot of money. Read on to find out more… Experience counts for a lot There’s no substitute for someone who’s experienced in online marketing and can guide you through the scams, pitfalls and misinformation that is still around. Outsourcing everything to one company can let you tap into decades of internet marketing experience, which as a small business…

• Social Media: It’s Not About You

  Jamie

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  A lot of the small business owners I speak to tell me they don’t ‘like’ or ‘get’ social media. Well, unfortunately social media is not about you. Keep reading to find out why. Here’s the most important thing; your customers expect you to be using social media. So if you’re not a Facebook fan, are terrified of Twitter, or glaze over at the thought of Google+ it’s time you did something about it. While most small businesses don’t have time to regularly update multiple social media accounts regularly, it certainly pays to be proactive on at least one. Personally, I like to use…

• Spring Clean Your Website in Five Easy Steps

  Jamie

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:32 pm

  We may only be in January, but it’s never too early to give your website a spring clean. Too many businesses leave their websites to stagnate, and with web users becoming savvier, this could be a critical mistake. Keep reading to discover five easy ways you can breathe some fresh life into your online presence. Update old blog posts Updating old blog posts can be good in terms of SEO and encouraging more people to read them. Let’s say you wrote a blog post a few months ago about a new product you’d just launched, why not add some more content to the end of the post to give people an…

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  Search Blog Asia - SEO Insights for China, Japan, Korea, Thailand...

• Sina Weibo Reaches Its Plateau

  Monique Li

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:27 am

  Weibo has made great progress in 2011, not only with Sina but also Tencent etc., which may exceed many industry experts’ predictions. Weibo is not merely an entertainment platform as Weibo is also widely used as a communication channel between government and people and helps to hold public-service activities. But even so, there seems to [...]

• Do you have Baidu Share code on your web pages

  Daniel Cai

  13 Jan 2012 | 12:44 am

  This week, Baidu started including “Baidu Share” data in its search results. It looks similar to Google +1, but it does not work exactly like Google +1. The data is from Baidu Share, and it only applies to websites that have Baidu share code. The functionality should be still in the testing stage, and it [...]

• The Largest Invisible Baidu Patron – HealthCare in China

  Kun Tang

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:20 pm

  A couple days ago, I was having a chat with several sales guys from the digital marketing industry. One of them was complaining that the big FMCG brands are too full of themselves to deal with, and the other was saying that he had spent 12 months following up a travel sector client and had [...]

• Answers to SEO Questions from a Baidu Search Engineer

  Roy Chen

  28 Dec 2011 | 8:48 pm

  Last year Baidu opened a platform called Baidu Webmaster Club to communicate with users. As Baidu is the most widely used search engine in China, we may get a lot of benefit from the authoritative answers of Baidu for SEO questions when we need to do optimization for websites. Here are several common difficult SEO [...]

• CNNIC published China Search Engine Market Research Report 2011

  Daniel Cai

  21 Dec 2011 | 10:20 pm

  On December 20th, 2011, CNNIC published “China Search Engine Market Research Report 2011”. By the end of 2011 Q3, the number of Chinese search engine users has reached 396 million. Baidu still dominates the Chinese market. Based on the data on October 2011 as per the report, Baidu has 78% market share in traffic, and [...]

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  Michigan Internet Marketing Firm | Big Daylight Group | SEO & PPC

• Facebook, Fab.com & Social Media Shop(Aholism)

  Sarah

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:05 am

  I love a shopping bargain as much as I love cool design, so that makes me an instant sucker for Fab.com. Fab not only does a great job curating a selection of unique discount finds, but also of marketing their site, including the funky snail-mail letter I got in the letter this week with the envelope that said “HI.” in big chunky letters. I’m not a big spender or anything (ex: I just bought some refreshingly non-dorky dog food bowls for $16), but still, the gesture was especially cute in light of my smallish shopping budget. So here I am, continuing my love affair with Fab,…

• SEO for a Redesign (Part 1) – How to Save Your Search Engine Traffic

  Sarah

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:10 pm

  As FINE specializes in digital web design, we’ve worked on our fair share of SEO implementations during a redesign. Sadly, website redesigns are notorious for causing sites to seemingly drop off the face of Google. (Note to self: must stop referring to the searchable Internet as Google). So how does FINE accomplish things like launching, for example, a brand-new website for famed Napa Valley resort Auberge du Soleil without losing traffic? Very carefully. It can be done, but there are lots of things to keep track of and balance as you move through the redesign. COMMON REASONS WHY…

• Google Analytics Real Time Stats – Sorta

  Nick

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:41 pm

  There’s no denying that the web is getting faster. Connection speeds for home and business, and especially mobile are allowing consumers to get the data they want faster and quicker than ever before.  Online marketers are no different – we want our data.. and we want it NOW.  We spend a great deal of time in Google Analytics, our favorite (and free!) analytics program – which is great and provides us the tools we need to analyze and measure traffic, trends, and most importantly, ROI for our clients. But what if we wanted to see what was going on with the site right this…

• Take 10 Minutes to Support an Open Internet

  Nick Nerbonne

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:49 am

  Google's logo is blacked out on its homepage in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Since you’re online this morning, you’ve likely seen mentions of a 24-hour blackout by Wikipedia and hundreds of other websites, or have at least seen Google’s homepage. The blackouts are being done to build awareness of two proposed bills in the U.S. Congress: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)  and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). So how can you help? First, if you want to learn more about SOPA and PIPA and how they will affect you, read our recent post about how, if passed, SOPA and PIPA will change…

• Search Minus Useful Results: Google Starts Off the New Year with a Humongous Mistake

  Admin

  13 Jan 2012 | 3:27 pm

  2012 seems, in its infancy, to be a year in which Google can do no right. The reaction to Search Plus Your World has been, understandably, less than ecstatic. Not many people, including us, have been too happy about encrypted search (I know – that’s so last year. But it’s an issue that’s going to hound us through this year, so I feel justified in its inclusion). Then there’s this, which throws “do no evil” (an edict that seems to depend on the flexibility of a person’s understanding of the word “evil”) right out the window.

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  Molosomar, Inc.

• Super Bowl commercials

  Molosomar Team

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:37 am

  If you’ve been waiting to see Molosomar’s Super Bowl ad, you can click the link to preview it now. You won’t see it if you watch the game, since a cost-effective commercial time slot did not open up. So, we’re displaying our ad for website visitors, only. Unless your firm has marketing expenditures the size...

• Mark Cuban is right about PR for firms

  Molosomar Team

  16 Jan 2012 | 9:44 am

  In his book and recent blog post, Mark Cuban explained that new companies should not pay to outsource the PR function.  We certainly agree, after all we made a similar point in our blog post, “When outsourcing marketing projects is a mistake”. Importantly, this isn’t just the case for startups and it’s not limited to...

• Does your business suffer from this common ailment?

  Molosomar Team

  12 Jan 2012 | 12:04 pm

  We’ve discovered 3 things that chiropractors and attorneys have in common (and one isn’t good). They may be in different industries, but they are similar in the following ways: Each is determined that clients will be better off after services are provided then they were when they first walked into the office. This is a good...

• Stop doing “same old same old”, immediately

  Molosomar Team

  2 Jan 2012 | 10:29 am

  If you haven’t started the new year having already tasked internal or external resources with crafting, implementing and managing marketing campaigns that are refreshingly new in type and content, stop what you’re doing and reset your organization’s focus. When all you’re doing this year is what you did before, don’t fool yourself into expecting better...

• Why the end/start of a year is ideal to improve your marketing efforts

  Molosomar Team

  27 Dec 2011 | 2:12 pm

  Running from mid-December to mid-January, you have an optimal opportunity to take your business to the next level in the new year. This arises because a lot of your normal work activities are interrupted by holidays, co-workers’ vacations and the reduced availability of your clients, customers or patients. Most businesses (except retailers) have fewer interactions...

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  Interactive Arts, LLC ®

• How to Measure Online Traffic that Converts Offline

  Chip Jones

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:40 pm

  Are you measuring online traffic, with the final purchase being done offline? As internet marketing consultants, we rarely see businesses that are measuring the entire sales process from the research stage to final conversion or purchase. It’s amazing to us that in the “Age of Web Metrics”, most companies aren’t doing this.  If you were a business owner or marketing manager, wouldn’t you want to be able to identify which marketing channels were producing the most sales or conversions? There’s more to measure than just an online OR offline conversion When…

• Are You Ready for the Mobile Device Generation?

  Chip Jones

  20 Dec 2011 | 1:46 pm

  It’s a New Dawn Most of us are aware that Mobile Internet usage is on an upward trend, but recent studies are showing that it is now going mainstream. In fact, a December 2011 report from Nielsen (“The Rise of Smartphones, Apps and the Mobile Web“) showed that the number of smartphone subscribers accessing the internet has grown 45 percent since 2010. Another report titled “Mobile Shopping Goes Mainstream” by comScore shows that two-thirds of all smartphone owners performed shopping activities on their phones. In fact, this same comScore report states that…

• Prevent Your Twitter Account From Being Suspended

  Chip Jones

  26 Sep 2011 | 11:00 am

  Many Internet Marketers today include Twitter in their overall Internet Marketing Strategy. It’s proven itself to be a great platform for reaching out to consumers and clients, and is an effective communication tool. What many Internet Marketers don’t realize is that Twitter accounts can be suspended and permanently terminated if the system is abused. In fact, the Twitter rules state that they reserve the right to immediately terminate any account, if that account is violating their rules or terms of service. Why Does Twitter Have Rules? Twitter basically wants to provide an open network…

• Google+ : Follow The Links

  Chip Jones

  6 Jul 2011 | 3:14 pm

  In late June 2011, Google announced their latest plans for a social media network with the launch of Google + (also called “Google Plus”). Many are asking if Google has the ability to take on a social media giant like Facebook. We see the motivation behind this launch in a different light. This is not Google’s first foray into the social media space. Their past efforts with “Buzz” and Google Wave were not successful, and one wonders why they continue trying. In fact, many so called “experts” are hinting that if Google fails in their social media efforts, it may mark the…

• Is Your Web Metrics Tracking Accurate?

  Chip Jones

  12 Apr 2011 | 11:02 am

  The "Set-It-And-Forget-It" rotisserie oven by Ronco Remember the original “Set-It-And-Forget-It” rotisserie oven advertised on television. You know, the one promoted by Ron Popeil as the “delicious alternative for those people with limited counter space, or simply on a budget.” In the 30 minute infomercial for this product, the tag line “Set-It-And-Forget-It” is repeated over and over again. It becomes a mantra that’s ingrained into our subconscious. “Set-It-And-Forget-It” Web Metrics Unfortunately, when it comes to implementing…

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  Ker Communications: SEO • Social Media • Web Design • Pittsburgh

• Pittsburgh SEO and Internet Marketing

  Nick Ker

  3 Jan 2012 | 6:15 pm

  Ker Communications provides internet marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), social media and website design services to a variety of companies and organizations around the world. We are located in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, PA (South Park Township to be precise) and we love the Burgh – and we love helping local Pittsburgh businesses succeed online. Of course there are thousands of website design, SEO consultants, social media agencies and internet marketing companies to choose from, but sometimes you just want to do business locally. If you are looking for great service when…

• Debunking Common SEO Misconceptions and Myths

  Nick Ker

  29 Nov 2011 | 12:14 pm

  Search Engine Optimization, can provide the best ROI for your internet marketing budget. Because it is widely misunderstood and just as commonly misused and abused, there are plenty of misconceptions about SEO that can derail your marketing efforts. Here are some commonly held beliefs that need some clarification: “I don’t need on site SEO, just 100 more links” There is just too much misinformation about SEO out there for you to assume your on site optimization has been done right.  Many times we will have a new client tell us it is all taken care of, then we discover their pages…

• Duquesne University Small Business Tech Conference

  Nick Ker

  9 Nov 2011 | 12:33 pm

  Duquesne University Small Business Development Center has invited me to speak about SEO at the 6th Annual Pennsylvania Business Technology Conference on Thursday, November 17, 2011 in Pittsburgh. I will be doing a break out session on “Search Engine Optimization – The Power of Page One: Why Search Engine Rank Matters & How to Climb Higher”. Since this is a small business oriented event, I will try to focus on some of the basic things small businesses can do to improve their search engine position on a limited budget. If you have ever spoken with me, you probably know I…

• Where to Find Links That Help Build Trust and Improve Search Engine Ranking

  Nick Ker

  11 Oct 2011 | 12:06 pm

  Some of the best SEO link building is “do it yourself” When it comes to getting better search engine ranking for your keywords, providing users with useful, informative, or entertaining content is of course your first priority. Second is good optimization of that content and how it is delivered – your site structure, meta tags, page titles, H1 headings, alt img tags and all that other behind the scenes stuff. Once you have that out of the way, achieving good search engine positions is all about trust, authority and reputation. Of the hundreds of ways Google and other search…

• Learn the Basics of SEO – Even If You Hire a Consultant

  Nick Ker

  4 Sep 2011 | 10:45 am

  Search engine optimization can be very confusing and time consuming to learn, especially if you only have limited knowledge of web design and development – and you don’t have the time nor the desire to learn all about it. For this reason, many people choose to hire professional SEO providers to take care of it for them. That is usually the best choice, but you would be doing yourself a huge favor if you take the time to learn the basics of SEO, so you will have a better understanding of what you can reasonably expect. Your consultant will be happier too, since they won’t…

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  markaguinn.com

• Random Photo 1/16

  mark

  16 Jan 2012 | 9:38 am

  This is a photo I took in the mountains outside of Panama City, Panama. If you ever get the chance to travel to Panama, don’t pass it up! You’ll enjoy a real learning experience in culture, food, art, history, food, engineering, food, nightlife, nature, and food. Oh, did I mention the food?!? Mmmmm.

• Random Photo 1/9/12

  mark

  9 Jan 2012 | 7:55 am

  This photo was taken in Felicity, CA. If you’ve never had the opportunity to visit this amazing little town, it is definitely worth the trip (just don’t go during the summer, because the design of the place is overshadowed by the blistering heat). Designed to be a remembrance of the world’s history, you will walk along rows of historical facts, excerpts from classic literature, and recreations of the world’s most famous artwork all carved in granite. At the beginning of the walk, you’ll see a pyramid that contains Fecility’s self-proclaimed “Official…

• Bending over for Medicare

  mark

  8 Jan 2012 | 10:52 am

  I read an article yesterday at Money.CNN.com discussing problems with the U.S.’ healthcare system (“Doctors Going Broke” ). I’ve worked in the medical field in some form or fashion for over 12 years now, and it’s nice to finally see the mainstream media picking up on a problem that healthcare professionals have been screaming about for a long time. Every year, Medicare pays physicians less and less to provide more services. As we’re moving into the age of the Baby Boomers, this is beginning to break the fiscal stability of our private practitioners. Several years ago, I heard from…

• This is just a test…

  mark

  6 Jan 2012 | 8:50 am

  You can ignore this message (unless you really need something to read)… I’m just testing a plugin.

• Creating a 2012 I can be proud of

  mark

  1 Jan 2012 | 9:24 pm

  Every new year, we seem compelled to make New Year’s Resolutions in an attempt to better ourselves and improve the overall quality of life. I still haven’t figured out exactly why we do this. Maybe this is just human nature because, as humans, we are never truly content with where we are or what we have accomplished. We know there is something better, and we constantly strive to make life better for ourselves and our loved ones. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our ambition and curiosity have pushed us to do some pretty amazing things. For example, someone had the ambition to place a…

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  Sparkplug Digital

• Book Review: The Like Economy by Brian Carter

  Dan Mckee

  22 Jan 2012 | 3:26 am

  About 90% of the people that speak at conferences on the topic of internet marketing have a sense of humor comparable to that of a sack of bricks and that reason alone is enough to root for Brian Carter. He’s got a personality big enough to fill any room and comes equipped with jokes, many of which are quite funny or at least palatable in comparison to the typical drab of the average keynote speaker. The man also frequently writes for All Facebook, a site that I’m quite fond of, and thus another reason why I was eager to get through The Like Economy. A book that – you guessed it – is…

• Infographic: SEO Tune-Up

  Sparkplug Digital

  9 Jan 2012 | 1:26 pm

  The beginning of the year is a great time “tune-up” your company’s SEO strategy so that you can get off to a great start in reaching your 2012 marketing goals. We created this infographic to provide a good checklist of things to consider to develop a high performing SEO strategy that will provide winning results. See the Full-Size Printable Version Please feel free to share this or republish it on your blog or website. Copy and Paste the following HTML code to place this infographic on your site: Infographic by Sparkplug Digital

• The Athlete, the Artist, and the Online Marketer

  Dan Mckee

  2 Jan 2012 | 10:44 pm

  More so than almost any other field, athletics and art are two career paths in which very few participants emerge as financially successful, despite a widespread base of interest and collective knowledge. There are many golfers, but very few can make a living from it and there can only be one Tiger Woods. There are many film makers, musicians, and sculptors, but almost none make it out of the garage and into the free market to an extent where art can be a full time means of income. One can choose to be an artist or an athlete for the pure joy or challenge of it, but the competition will…

• Blogging isn’t Dead, but Quality Content is Still on Life Support

  Dan Mckee

  30 Dec 2011 | 6:08 pm

  When someone stands up (usually a blogger) and says that blogging is dead I typically don’t pay much attention, because history has time and again proven otherwise. Like a cat with many lives blogging never really goes away; it just keeps evolving and growing. This past week though when Jeremiah Owyang commented on the topic in his post End of an Era: The Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over I was all ears. Owyang is gifted when it comes to nailing down the current state of the web and where things are going. He’s a trusted source of insight and his thoughts here were no exception.

• Reality Check: Are Paid Links a Smart SEO Investment?

  Dan Mckee

  18 Dec 2011 | 11:31 pm

  Not many SEOs like to talk openly about paid links, at least not anywhere other than behind the safety of closed doors. There’s a stigma associated with paid links and it’s often paired with negative connotations. HubSpot called it the Steroids of SEO. Just blogging about it even feels a little weird. Nonetheless paid links are as real as any other component of SEO and can’t be ignored. Some think of it as a dark art, while others might say it’s just another aspect of the game. Despite your own feelings on the subject, it can be argued that anyone who hopes to further their education…

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  Search and Social Marketing Services

• SEO Objective Checklist

  admin

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:16 am

  SEO Objective Checklist Now this won’t look the same for everyone, but there are some basics that all sites should have by now in 2012: Does the site have the proper header tags? For social too? (Bonus Points if it does) Does the site have social icon buttons to share content? Are the profiles complete on each social network? Does the destination page support the keyword to get ranked? Is the optimized page the best it can possibly be? Are you getting links pointed to your page from various sites around the web? Does the optimized page have a video and image that support the keyword for…

• SPAM Served up Piping Hot – Steve Rudolph and LinkBuildingUnderground.com

  admin

  20 Jan 2012 | 9:52 am

  SPAM Served up Piping Hot – Steve Rudolph and LinkBuildingUnderground.com I really hate spam. I’m sure you do as well. So, I’ve made it a personal vendetta of mine to re-post some of the crap emails I get to my account. And, I’m not letting these people off the hook with their “We follow the can-spam act blah, blah, blah” either. For this first example, Steve Rudolph sends me the following: “To: Webmaster From: Steve Rudolph info@linkbuildingunderground.com Monthly Budget 5000 Message: I am a professional link builder with a team of 20 link builder…

• 5 Minutes Guide to Search for High Quality Backlinks

  Paul

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:02 am

  5 Minutes Guide to Search for High Quality Backlinks An Email I just got that actually has some good quick tips: What I mean as a high-quality backlinks here is an inner-page that has a high PageRank and dofollow. And the easiest way to add a backlink to our site is definitely blog commenting. First of all, what we need is Mozilla Firefox add-on called SEO Quake. SEO Quake will automatically tell us the PageRank of all pages that appear in search results, and it also can sort the search results base on their PageRank. So basically, this is what we do: # 1. Install SEO Quake add on to your…

• Brand Favoritism

  Paul

  13 Jan 2012 | 6:07 am

  Brand Favoritism Note: This is more of a rant than anything important! Not just from a customer perspective, but hiring as well. Seems like most people want to associate themselves with a big name, so that they look like they made the best possible choice – and if it’s the wrong choice, it’s easier to say that the failure was not because of them, but because the brand was soo big, it failed to live up to it’s own name, probably because they are so big. Titles – Some people obsess over these. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people remain in…

• Brand New Product – MegaLink Stacks

  Paul

  12 Jan 2012 | 12:31 pm

  Brand New Product – MegaLink Stacks So, I get the following email today: Happy New Year! We have a new product called “MegaLink Stacks” which we’ll be adding to www.MegaLinkStore.com in a few weeks but we want to give you the opportunity to purchase before our official launch. Here’s how the MegaLink Stacks work. You give us a website URL along with up to 8 keywords (depends on package type) you would like to rank in Google. We then take content you give us or content from your website and spin the content to create 1000s of unique articles never before seen by…

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  Jordon Meyer - eCommerce Search Marketing

• My Top 12 SEM Online Resources

  Jordonm

  4 Jan 2012 | 11:22 pm

  TweetTo ring in 2012, here is a list of my top 12 most frequently read Search Engine Marketing resources. I visit most of these sites every day – so I tend to say “yep I read that earlier” a lot. If you want to be as much of a “Great News Everyone” downer as I can be, go ahead and give these a look. In all seriousness, I get a lot of great news, tactics, and strategic ideas from these websites. And I am very thankful to the people putting in the hours of work to make them so good. :List Below: Alltop | http://sem.alltop.com/ The SEM information King. This is an aggregator of most…

• 7 ½ Myths about PPC

  Jordonm

  6 Dec 2011 | 9:57 pm

  Tweet7 ½ Myths about PPC. Because there are just too many complete lists in the world. 1. Big Pockets only, during Black Friday and Cyber Monday If you’re selling TVs or Laptops, yes, you have an insane amount of competition and should Not do major holidays. *Only play with the big guys if your site has the right offers and value-adds to your visitors. I would also stick to long-tail keywords that have been proven winners for you in the past. BUT if you are specialized in B2C or practically any B2B, don’t worry about big retailer competition. You should be able to run smoothly with your…

• My Secret AdWords Arrow CTR Booster ⇒

  Jordonm

  22 Oct 2011 | 10:25 am

  The time has come for me to reveal a 2 year long secret…I have been cheating in AdWords! I found a loophole in ad copy restrictions that has allowed me to write a select number of ads with an arrow ⇒ in the copy! It has boosted CTR over nearly every ad I ever put it up against. You will see up to a ~15% CTR boost. The trick is to use Special ASCII HTML Character Codes to make the arrow. You can find the code on an ASCII site or just copy this ⇒ and never lose it. You simply past this into your ad copy and away you go; boosted CTRs in most cases. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want…

• Brick to Click Failure, an Online Marketing Lesson

  Jordonm

  19 Sep 2011 | 10:25 pm

  I‘m not a business owner, but have worked alongside CEOs, COOs, and General Managers over the past 6 years to learn the ins and outs of pureplay eCommerce, online with retail heritage, and multi-channel businesses. I have learned the tough lessons as well shared the victories with them. My eCommerce experience has had its ups and downs, along with the success and failures of business. I have been lucky enough to be hands-on with the operations, but also lucky enough to learn the hard lessons without impacting my bank account.   Below is a typical situation of an online business with a…

• Your Link is Worthless Without Tracking

  Jordonm

  15 Aug 2011 | 9:59 pm

  Attention small business owners, enterprise marketing directors, and social media mavens: the following two words can help you stay in business, get a raise, or bring campaign enlightenment to your efforts.  TRACK EVERYTHING. NOT easier said than done. This is Legos and hopscotch…what I’m saying is that a kid can do it. (Please deal with my use of caps lock and bold during this adventure, I’m PASSIONATE about analytics.) Would you blindly hand $100,000 to a search engine? How about $5,000 to an email marketing company? $1,000 on a social media campaign? $500 to print a QR code on your…

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  Digital Marketing Blog

• Search Engine Market Share Statistics – January 2012

  James

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:19 am

  A new year and a new development in the ongoing struggle for search engine market share. Last year we spoke about the turning point when Microsoft’s Bing would overtake Yahoo in terms of US market share; well latest figures reveal they have done so, meaning that 2012 has started off great for Bing, and pretty poorly for Yahoo. In the UK, the good news for Bing has continued as their share has jumped 0.26% in the last month. All other search engines gained a share of the UK market, with Google being the only one to actually see a drop. So, starting with the UK search engine market share,…

• How to use Pinterest for Business

  Tara West

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:45 am

  Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last month or so, you have probably heard of Pinterest.  Although it’s been around since March 2010, it’s now getting a lot of buzz from marketers, big brands, and users alike. This post looks at what it is, how consumers use it and more importantly how businesses and brands can use it. What is Pinterest? The site describes itself as an online pin-board to organise and share the things you love, and that’s exactly what it is! Users can create boards and give them unique names. The Pin It bookmarklet for browsers means that…

• Social Media Monitoring – Are You Offering Customer Service?

  Andy

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:53 am

  Social Media is now part of every day life. If you spend a percentage of your day online then you will almost certainly have a social profile of some sort. Twitter and Facebook are sites a majority of people are active on, with the likes of Google Plus also now very much in the game. These sites are now so set into our lives that most of us no longer think twice about what we say on them, making them a common place for us to moan. We don’t even give it a second thought. If something has annoyed us then we will Tweet about it. The same goes for anything that impresses us. We now go out of…

• Infographic: How Google Makes its Money

  Stephen

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:40 am

  It’s no secret that Google makes more money than some countries. Last year their revenue reached a staggering $37.9 billion across multiple channels, including search advertising, display ads and services. But where did all that money come from? The infographic below, created by Wordstream, highlights the advertising spend across all major markets in America and includes the top advertisers in each industry. Finance and insurance is the biggest sector, spending $4 billion, with retailers and general merchandise second coughing up $2.8 billion for ad space. You can also see what the most…

• Everything You Wanted To Know About .XXX (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

  Andy

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:22 am

  The new .XXX domain format raises a lot of questions for businesses of any size. Do you need to buy a .XXX domain to protect your brand name, and what can you do if someone else purchases your brand in this format? This video looks at this domain extension and whether it is worth an investment for large or small businesses. So if you’ve ever wanted to talk about .XXX domains, we’re here for you. To get regular video updates subscribe to our YouTube page or Like us on Facebook. Transcript Hi, I’m Andy and today I’m going to be looking at .xxx domains. What we’re…

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  Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation | Internet Marketing

• Speeding up CPA network acceptance

  Andrew Wee

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:13 pm

  It seems like new affiliates might have difficulty getting accepted into a CPA network, especially if they’re new and have little or no experience. I often read of these new marketers having their affiliate application denied, especially at major networks. Here are some tips to increase your chances of getting accepted. “Interviewing” for your CPA network affiliate application: [...]

• Neverblue Asia launch event in Singapore on Dec 15

  Andrew Wee

  3 Dec 2011 | 8:07 pm

  It’s taken about 4 years to see the launch of a major CPA network in Singapore, but I think the wait has been worth it. Since the first affiliate summit I attend in 2008, I’d been talking to the affiliate networks about establishing a presence in Asia, especially with the growing number of affiliates in this [...]

• Weight loss for Internet marketers

  Andrew Wee

  13 Oct 2011 | 1:13 pm

  One of the occupational hazards with working at a desk all day is that you tend to neglect exercise, eat junk food and end up putting on weight and having your body in bad shape. For me, this has translated into putting on about 33lbs (about 15kg) since getting married and not being able to do [...]

• I’m looking for a few top Neverblue affiliates. Apply here.

  Andrew Wee

  12 Oct 2011 | 9:01 am

  Since early 2011, CPA network has been expanding aggressively out of Canada and the US to focus on growing its Europe and Asia business (affiliates and advertisers) and I found out that the network had opened a Hong Kong office to fuel its expansion. I had a great discussion with Neverblue senior network manager, Samatha Brachat, [...]

• Lessons Internet marketers can take from Apple’s Steve Jobs

  Andrew Wee

  6 Oct 2011 | 7:22 pm

  He was born Steven Paul Jobs on Feb 24, 1955 in San Francisco, CA. The world would know him better as “Steve Jobs”. To the Apple faithful, he would be like a god to them, but that image was broken when he died on Oct 5, 2011, aged 56, having lost his [...]

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  Search Engine Optimisation

• Refer a Friend – Earn Cash Today!

  Andy Kinsey

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  As many of you know SEOAndy is part of Andy Kinsey Designs, which also offers website design and graphic design services. Today I launched a referral scheme for those divisions, within a few hours I’ve had about 15 “affiliates” sign up. The premise is simple, refer a friend and earn up to £25 per new client. To get started all affiliates need to do is send me a few details and they can instantly start referring and begin to cash in on clients they refer. Referrals are free to come via word of mouth, email, facebook, twitter etc – all the referred company  / person…

• Google Privacy Update – What It Really Means

  Andy Kinsey

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:06 am

  In this post at the risk of becoming a news type I wanted to clear some crap up about the latest round of privacy updates from Google. Over the past few 24 hours I’ve read countless articles and opinions about how “scary” this is and with lots of news lets claiming a “backlash” against Google which just fuels the whole scary thing… So in this post I am going to tell you why things have changed and what has changed that you need to know. Remember as you read this 99% of what is in this new document already existed, it was just duplicated across many other…

• The Future of SEO – The Game is NOT Over

  Andy Kinsey

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:01 am

  I recently spoke to a group of SEO’s and Marketer’s about an article I wrote last year predicting the SEO trends of 2012. There were many questions asked about why I thought things would happen and how we can best leverage what we know and predict. Today I wanted to share a few of those questions and answer them in public. If you have a question about my predictions for SEO in 2012 and beyond leave a comment below this article. Personalised Search is moving to the main stream, how can we best use this to our advantage as marketers? One of the things as Marketers of the Digital…

• Start Up Marketing: The SEO of Guest Blogging

  Andy Kinsey

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:34 am

  Over the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to guest blog around the web, on a variety of subjects related to design, seo and marketing. Last year I opened the doors to let my child out to play and offered the chance to guest post on SEOAndy. From my experience of writing and being written for I wanted to talk about why and how you should guest post. This is a topic of great value to start up businesses, as well as existing businesses who are looking to gain drive more traffic to their website. Before I go rambling on, the first thing to say is that it is not easy to start guest…

• 10 Secrets of Online Selling

  Andy Kinsey

  21 Jan 2012 | 4:10 am

  Selling online is not easy normally, and even less so in this economic down turn. But with the use of 10 simple seo secrets to online selling you can not just improve your online sales by a few percent but by a huge amount. It’s About The Product! Just because you spent hundreds or thousands on a nice shiney new ecommerce website doesn’t mean that your potential customers are interested in it. Your visitors are there for one thing your product, so sell it … stop faffing with adding new features and cluttering the product pages, nice simple descriptive content with an awesome…

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  Network Intellect

• 4 Social Media Tactics Businesses Will Implement In 2012

  Network Intellect

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  This year is thought to be the year when some  major social media tactics could affect businesses. Some of these tactics have already been taken on by some companies, but 2012 is set to be the year that we will see a huge adoption of these tactics by all kinds of businesses. 1. Facebook For Profit Facebook is now heading toward a billion users, so for marketers it is time to get serious.In previous years, businesses focused a great deal on the large number of Facebook fans without taking into consideration the quality of each of these fans they had gained. This year, advertisers and brands…

• The Differences Between Facebook And LinkedIn

  Network Intellect

  25 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Social networking services are designed to provide the Web-based tools to enable people to build upon communications to generate online communities. Social networking sites offer a way for individuals or groups to create a personal profile of themselves, then share that profile with other members within the social networking space. The sites will offer users several ways to communicate with others in the space, via e-mail, file sharing, videos, etc. Facebook and LinkedIn are two popular social networking sites. Both of these sites are designed to link up people online, but yet the two sites…

• 5 Tips For Increasing Your Twitter Followers

  Network Intellect

  23 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  If you know what to look for, Twitter can open the door to sales opportunities, help you grow your audience, and take your business to the next level, so why not take advantage of it? With this in mind, here are five tips to help you grow your base of Twitter followers: 1. Listen And Follow Find out who is talking about your brand and listen to them to find out what they are saying about you. You should also follow them in order to keep the dialogue going. In most cases they will usually follow you back. 2. Partnerships Cross-promote key partnerships. Mention them, retweet, and build a…

• 3 Tips For Twitter’s Brand Pages

  Network Intellect

  20 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Twitter has made some big changes recently, one being the launch of their brand pages for marketers. By the development of a landing page that is easier for brands to customise, Twitter has increased the likeliness of users staying on their platform for longer, instead of leaving the site to look for more information about a particular brand. With this in mind, here are three ways in which a business can leverage Twitter’s new brand pages: 1. Improved Customisation Businesses are now able to put brand messaging front and centre. It is easier to promote Twitter chats, hashtags and special…

• 4 Tips For Creating A Social Media Strategy

  Network Intellect

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Social media is everywhere we look, and companies are beginning to see the value of incorporating it into their marketing mix. By using social media in the correct way you can connect with your existing audience in new ways, and develop new connections etc. However, many people are unclear about where they should start and how they should develop a plan. With this in mind, here are four steps to consider when it comes to developing a social media strategy: 1. Listen Get online and listen to what is being said about your brand. Find out what people think about it, who the key people who…

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  The Click Whisperer

• Advertising and Marketing: The Limiting Reagents in the Business Success Reaction

  Jason Pelish

  21 Jan 2012 | 4:21 pm

      Chemistry’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

  Jason Pelish

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 am

      You’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…

• Heroku: the Facebook App Developer’s Big Boon

  Jason Pelish

  9 Jan 2012 | 11:24 am

      A few months ago, at the ExactTarget Connections Event, in September, I heard that Facebook was going to make building Facebook Applications easier and more accessible to “the average joe.” I assumed this would equate to an easier process for building applications; I eagerly awaited changes to the Facebook Developer’s site that would explain the process more clearly and lower the bar for anyone wanting to build Facebook apps. Even though I’ve built a few Facebook Applications, I don’t feel like I’ve got a sturdy enough understanding of the…

• WordPress is so easy. That’s why we use it.

  Jason Pelish

  20 Dec 2011 | 10:19 pm

      If I had to point to one thing that’s the epitome of “Web 2.0″ it’s WordPress. No other tool makes it as easy for ordinary business people to publish web content. It’s so easy that it has earned our nickname “Fisher-Price”  as in “The Fisher-Price Content Management System”. I’ve been creating web content since 1996, when the web first became open to the public. When it comes to making great websites, the same challenges existed then that exist now. It is a really different world now though. It’s different…

• George Carlin on Advertising and Marketing: A Classic Routine

  Jason Pelish

  31 Oct 2011 | 11:41 am

   

• 

  Experience Engineer

• Happy year of the Dragon! - CNY 2012

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:20 pm

  To all my Chinese New Years celebrating friends, have a great year of the Dragon! Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Social Media Brings Nike 'Closer Than Ever'

  24 Dec 2011 | 4:59 am

  via mediapost.com Calling the results “remarkable,” Nike Inc. says its fiscal second-quarter revenues climbed 18% to $5.7 billion, from $4.8 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 3% to $469 million, compared with $457 million in the year-ago period. Sales in North America were particularly strong, up 21%, with double-digit gains in stores and online on Thanksgiving weekend. The results beat investor expectations, and Nike executives say the strong performance is a result of steady gains in both its basketball and running divisions, as well as its continued digital…

• Does investing in Social Media create business value? (via Ogilvy)

  21 Dec 2011 | 6:38 pm

  via slideshare.net Ogilvy just released a study on the business value of Social Media. In the wake of the Harvard study concluding that taste does not rub on on your friends through social media this seemed to be an appropriate topic to bring up. The Harvard study is useless to most businesses. What does it matter if my taste is different from my friends. What matters is that I spend more on your brand because the shared taste with my friend and their confirmation of the awesomeness of your brand makes me want to buy it. (read that really quick, it is an awesome run on sentence) Kapow! So…

• Digital race to the bottom

  21 Dec 2011 | 4:21 am

  via psfk.com And we need to change that. Groupon, Gilt Group, Savvy, etc. All companies that are looking to deliver the best prices for the consumer. Not only the best prices but sometimes unachievable prices. The digital age brought in the age of cost reduction and lean. That's great. But it's time to think of the other side more. Let's really start looking at how digital can increase the value of goods. Layar, Ruck.us, CraftCoffee. etc. Besides making the world cheaper, can we also make it more awesome? Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Measuring your influence as a media outlet

  16 Dec 2011 | 4:13 am

  via adweek.com As everyone is becoming a media outlet it is only natural to want to measure influence. Adweek just published a nice little overview of the influence measurement services out there. There is lot's of talk about how Klout is stupid. And yes there is a long way to go. But the simple dashboard style influence analytics's tool is here to stay. Do you use one of these tools? What are you thoughts? Permalink | Leave a comment  »

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  Enrollmark

• EnrollMark’s Seussical Social Solutions

  Mike Hines

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:37 pm

  I’m really excited to announce a new online series our digital marketing team has been working vigorously to release. It’s called “Seussical Social Solutions,” and it’s a six part series over 11 weeks that provides insight, tricks, tips and information for schools about marketing online. Each chapter of the series has a different Dr. Seuss theme and ranges in topics from building community with social media, using SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, reputation management, pain points for enrollment and retention, and how to increase…

• How Apple could change education

  Mike Hines

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:38 am

  EnrollMark’s Maria Konopken, a social media specialist, discusses how Apple is changing the future of education. It is hard to imagine a world before “i” came before everything. From how we listen to music to how we explore the Internet, it can go without saying that Apple products have changed how we function in our everyday lives. This same shift in lifestyle could be coming to the classroom.  Last week, January 19 2012, Apple executives and others gathered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to present and discuss the company’s future plans for the education market. According…

• Social Media and Preschool Student Safety

  Lisa Owen

  13 Jan 2012 | 8:48 am

  As schools begin to look into using Social Media as a marketing and community building tool, the question of student privacy and in some cases, safety, usually arises at some point in the consideration process. Preparing a plan for the use of photos and videos including students before launching any social media campaign is essential. For schools dealing with very young children, this is absolutely essential. Schools have always been aware that they need to be sensitive of student privacy, and this awareness must extend into the digital space as well. While many people embrace social media,…

• Multi-Campus Charter

  EnrollMark

  9 Jan 2012 | 12:02 pm

  Multi-Campus Arizona Charter School Case Study The Results: • Total of 579 enrollments, or 126% of the goal in over 90 days • Over 3,300% Return on Investment • West Valley campus – Goal: 114 enrollments; Result: 209 new enrollments • East Valley campus – Goal: 204 enrollments; Result: 230 new enrollments • Southeastern Arizona campus – Goal: 142 enrollments; Result: 130 new enrollments The Client: This Arizona-based charter school is now in its fourth year of operations with campuses across the state of Arizona. With over 2,000 students enrolled it is one of the…

• Social media misconduct in the classroom: How do teachers communicate with students?

  Mike Hines

  4 Jan 2012 | 3:55 pm

    How do social-media savvy teachers communicate with their students?    While more educators continue to use Facebook and Twitter to interact with students, a wave of confusion on social media policies have hit the desks of school administrators. The New York Times published a story about administrators cracking down on inappropriate online interactions between teachers and students, which in some cases resulted in sexual abuse or assault charges.It’s truly a muddy area. How do you encourage online interaction, while at the same time censoring or limiting your communication…

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  BizChangerZ

• Adding Pinterest to Scrolling Social Sharebar

  "Captain" Kirk

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:19 pm

  Modifying plugin code is just about as fun as having a root canal; it all comes down to where you’re adding the plugin, and what social media platform your using. Lucky for you, I am obsessed with modifying plugins and I’m here to make your life easier. Pinterest is the fastest growing social media network to date. Businesses (like yours) should take advantage of this new found fame by incorporating the Pinterest sharing widget to their blog and/or website. Without further ado, here’s how to add Pinterest to Scrolling Social Sharebar. Let’s Get Started! Log into…

• With Mobile, The Degrees of Separation Between Brand and Consumer Vanish

  Christina Pappas

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:11 pm

  Consider for a moment all the various mediums we use to connect and promote our brand with our target audience. We have email, TV, radio, billboards, print media, online banners and events to name a few. Have you ever thought about the degrees of separation between your message and the person you hope it reaches? Now I am not talking about the various lengths we go to in order to ensure our target audience sees our message, I am talking about the actual interaction between brand and consumer. I was watching a presentation the other day put on by Celtra http://www.celtra.com/ about mobile…

• Success in 2012

  Justin Brackett

  10 Jan 2012 | 6:40 am

  2012. The year of growth and recovery. Everyone seems abuzz with what new and exciting things this year will hold. Social streams and blogs are already talking about the iPhone 5 (we wish it was the iPhone SJ), the iPad 3, the expansion of Mobile Marketing and the Red Sox winning the world series (maybe that one is just me being hopeful). With all that chatter, how do you still stand out? How do you find and keep your ideal clients? You know, the ones that are just right for your business, want to stick with you and turn into lifelong advocates? Forget about growth and recovery for a…

• Time to Update WordPress 3.3.1 is Here

  "Captain" Kirk

  5 Jan 2012 | 11:32 am

  Yet again another WordPress update has arrived! From their announcement summary they have fixed several vulnerability issues from version 3.3. “This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K. and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team.” As usual updating of WordPress as easy as a click. When you log into your WordPress admin you should see a link at the top of the page indicating the…

• 3 Easy Fixes for the Most Common Social Media Blunders

  Justin Brackett

  5 Jan 2012 | 7:57 am

  So far universities don’t offer a degree in social media and creating a social media strategy for your business can be as fun as getting a root canal. Whether you’ve been using social media for a while or you’re just getting started, most businesses are making the same costly social media blunders. Good news is these blunders have an easy fix. But if you continue doing them, you won’t get the most out of your social media endeavors. And you don’t want that, right? Here are three common social media blunders and how to fix them. 1.  Get Leadership to Buy In Social media is the new…

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  eProfit Partners

• Google AdWords Conversion Tracking 101

  Phil Frost

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:09 am

  If you’re new to online advertising or if you’re running an ad campaign without proper conversion tracking, then this article will help you get started.   What is Conversion Tracking? Let’s start by defining a conversion. A conversion is really any action on your website that you deem valuable.  For example, you may want to track the following conversions on your website: when a customer completes an order when a prospect adds a product to the shopping cart when a prospect submits a contact form when a prospect submits a form to access a free report when a prospect…

• How to Increase Your Sales (Without Increasing Your Traffic)

  Pete Kennedy

  9 Jan 2012 | 10:42 am

  If you want to increase the sales from your website, where’s the first place you’ll focus? Well, if you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’ll look for ways to get more traffic. But more traffic often isn’t the right answer. Of course you can’t make sales if you have zero traffic, but the real leverage is in your conversion rates. As Phil pointed out in this article (3 Ways to Generate More Revenue), there are 2 reasons why conversions are more important than traffic: 1. If you can double your website conversion rate, then you’ll double your sales without any…

• 3 Ingredients of an Effective SEO Strategy

  Pete Kennedy

  4 Jan 2012 | 12:17 am

  Over the past couple months, I’ve been speaking to lots of business owners about their online marketing plans for 2012. And most people want to get more traffic from Google. However, most business owners don’t have a clear strategy for SEO. They want to get ranked higher, but don’t really understand what it takes. And as a result, they’re not taking the action they need to take to get rankings, traffic and sales. So, in today’s post, I’d like to share my simple approach to SEO. Here are 3 key ingredients of an effective SEO strategy. Ingredient #1. Research The first…

• There Are Only 3 Ways to Generate More Online Revenue

  Phil Frost

  27 Dec 2011 | 5:39 pm

  With so much online marketing advice out there and a new whiz bang tactic or website introduced almost every day, it can be easy to forget there are really only 3 ways to generate more online revenue. That’s right…just 3. So as you plan your 2012 marketing strategy and schedule, make sure you’re focused on the one that’ll have the biggest impact on YOUR business right NOW. As your business grows your priorities will naturally shift between one of of these three core areas: Traffic Conversion Lifetime Value   Rather than try to improve everything all at once,…

• Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions For Entrepreneurs

  Pete Kennedy

  19 Dec 2011 | 11:00 am

  New Year’s Resolutions are pretty worthless, aren’t they? When was the last time you heard of somebody actually following through on a New Year’s resolution? PROOF: For 2010, I decided to make my New Year’s resolution as easy as possible, so I knew I’d follow through. My commitment? To get a massage 1X/month. This shouldn’t have been hard. I LOVE massages. Plus, I even bought an annual membership at a massage studio. I pre-paid! And even then, I still couldn’t keep the commitment. Imagine being too lazy to get out of your house to go redeem a pre-paid…

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  Search Engine Marketing Blog, Adwords Blog | PPC Associates

• Debunking the Myths of Quality Score

  admin

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:17 am

  About two years ago, our Founder and CEO, David Rodnitzky, issued a challenge to all PPC Associates employees to “find a repeatable method for improving Quality Score.” Sounds simple enough, but four offices and 30-plus new employees later, that prize is still up for grabs! In my pursuit of “the answer,” I’ve come across just about every QS myth imaginable. Let the debunking begin! 1) Myth: Quality Score is at the keyword level. For even intermediate SEMs, quality score seems to be thought of as a keyword’s attribute. In actuality, QS is based on the performance of a keyword with…

• Lobbyists 1, Internet 0: An Alternative Take on SOPA

  David Rodnitzky

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:12 am

  Last week’s “SOPA blackout” was a massive success. Almost 100,000 people changed their Facebook or Twitter profile pictures in support of the blackout; Google blacked-out their logo on their homepage and sent people to an online petition against SOPA, resulting in upwards of seven million signatures; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on (of course) Facebook strongly criticizing the bill; and Wikipedia shut down entirely for one day, resulting in eight million people searching for contact info for their member of Congress. The public outcry was so overwhelmingly anti-SOPA, that 90…

• Simple campaign structures + segmentation = optimal

  Sean Marshall

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  I believe in simple campaign structures. From a grouping/theming standpoint, I tend to view keywords as 1’s and 0’s, and I don’t put too much stock in thematic groups at the campaign level. Given that PPC Associates uses a single-keyword ad group methodology, theming, as it related to ad copy, is irrelevant. What I do care about on the campaign side is whether my campaign structure accomplishes the following: best use of campaign-level settings and enabling of efficient optimization and scale. The first piece is relatively simple. If there is something unique about the campaign settings…

• The Myth Of Ad Text Succinctness

  Todd Mintz

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:53 am

  Yeah, you say it best/When you say nothing at all. – Keith Whitley Google AdWords allows ad headlines to be 25 characters long and ad description lines to be 35 characters long. In other words, SEMs have a maximum of 95 text characters to entice a prospect to click through to the website. We all agree that people writing ad text for AdWords are forced to use very direct language and “short” words in order to create compliant ad text and get their messaging out to prospective visitors. Correct? Not necessarily.   Recently, I had the opposite problem. 95 characters were too…

• Should Dummies Be Using AdWords?

  David Rodnitzky

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:48 am

  One of the first things I always tell marketing newbies about AdWords is that it is “easy to do, but hard to do well.” There’s a reason search engine marketing agencies like PPC Associates get paid big bucks to manage AdWords campaigns for savvy clients. If it was easy, we’d be out of business! So I was naturally a little skeptical when my colleague Howie Jacobson asked me to review the latest edition of his book “AdWords for Dummies.” My concern, philosophically, was that any book that claimed in its title that a “dummy” could succeed at AdWords was at best hyperbole and at…