November 2009 Archives

The Google Wave (of Ad Releases)

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Website Marketing
on November 30, 2009 7:21 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
You probably thought this column would be about Google Wave. Well, it is and it isn't. Sure, Google has launched a collaboration application to a limited number of beta testers. However, the really important "wave" out of Google this year is the wave of new ad formats, ad opportunities, and monetization methods that are going live soon or are live now.

Let's look at each of these new ad "opportunities," some of which you can opt into, others designed to become part of your standard PPC spending. Either way, one thing is clear: Google is set on monetizing greater percentages of its screen real estate while maintaining or even improving the search experience. As usual, Google manages to pull off both simultaneously, but it's going to run out of levers to pull soon, because it's pulling a ton of levers this year.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635702

Don't Overdo the Tweaking

By
Website Marketing
on November 27, 2009 8:08 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Clients can easily become obsessed with on-page SEO, constantly tweaking title tags, headings, and on-page content. While these activities are important at the right place and time, people shouldn't get obsessed with it. Do the necessary work up front, make some decisions, and then move on.

Tweaking on-page content on existing pages quickly begins to offer you diminishing returns. In addition, you probably have limited resources for SEO. As a result, every minute you spend tweaking (and re-tweaking) on-page factors is a minute you don't spend on promoting the Web site (collectively this includes link building, PR, and social media reference building).

Unlike on-page SEO, Web site promotion nearly always continues to offer good returns. The only exception to this is if your site is dominant in the SERPs in your space.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635670

Getting Started with a New SEO Project

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Website Marketing
on November 23, 2009 12:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
It's important to start every Web site development project by understanding the role of SEO in the project. The team of people working on the project has limited time, and most likely they have a schedule. Focusing them on the wrong things will produce less than optimal results.

Let's focus in on the role of SEO in the project plan in the context of developing a new site. But these principles can be applied to any new SEO project with simple modifications.

Start the SEO effort before you write the first line of code. Search Engine Watch readers are probably aware of the following four points:

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635545/

Identify New Paid Search Opportunities

By
Website Marketing
on November 20, 2009 7:37 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Google has 64.9 percent market share, and a combination of Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and AOL makes up the other 35 percent, according to the September comScore search engine rankings report. What about the searches that are done on CNN.com, Business.com, or the NYTimes.com? These Web sites all display search ads that get their listings from one of the major search engines.

Search engines like Google have built such a robust technology and network of advertisers that it looks to leverage these resources by getting additional search volume from people who don't search from Google. To do this, Google and other major search engines look to partner with Web sites that have regular visitors and publish content, but don't have a robust search engine technology. This creates an ideal partnership where both the publisher and search engine can mutually benefit.

So the question is how do these relationships impact your paid search campaigns, and how can you use this information to alter your results?

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635631

What You Can Do Now to Start Ahead of the Game in 2010

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Website Marketing
on November 19, 2009 8:16 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
It's that time when advertisers become retrospective, reviewing everything that's happened in the past few months, taking stock of where they are, while speculating what could happen next. Yes, the season finale of "Mad Men" really puts life in perspective.

The end of the calendar year and the onset of the holidays do too, I guess.

Rather than wait until the bubbly's been popped and the ball has dropped, consider being proactive now. You're almost certainly in code freeze, and developers are already hard at work on the first release of 2010. Providing your team feedback so they can make changes now will get priorities in place in time to kick off the year on an up note for SEO, PPC, and your campaigns as a whole.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635682

Integrating Social Media, Search Marketing, and PR

By
Website Marketing
on November 18, 2009 9:25 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Unequivocally, the biggest questions of the year are: "Where does social media fit into my search and marketing plan?" and "Where's the ROI going to come from to CYA for the spend?" Answers to these questions will be addressed during the panel session, "PR, Social Media, and Search" at SES Chicago next month. This topic has me so pumped, that I'm flying from California to Chicago in the heart of December.

Looking at major brands like Dell, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, and more, our panel explores the boomerang effect of social media on PR efforts, SEO, and all things in between. It's been stated that social media is the single biggest differentiator in the SEO world today. Those that harness unique user-generated content, the links from the blogosphere and forums, as well as the buzz created from retweets, Facebook updates, and YouTube videos, will reap benefits -- if done correctly.

Moreover, the PR impact of social is undeniable. That includes responding to erroneous attacks on your brand through a timely response on Twitter and in the blogosphere, or getting buzz about a new product launch. There's no better way to get the word out than the social media channel.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635632

Four Steps to Social Media Marketing Success

By
Website Marketing
on November 17, 2009 7:34 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Whether you're a business or an individual, you must wrestle with many complex issues for social media. These can often be overwhelming. Where to even begin?

Rather than be paralyzed, it's often best to understand that there are four simple, yet critical, steps to social media

It's easiest to think of it as a stairway, and the diagram is laid out as such. If you learn anything from this column, it's that you need to take that first step. It's also the most important one. As showcased in the diagram, the four steps are:

1. Listen to your customer and conversations around your brand.

2. Interact -- join the conversation.

3. React -- Adjust your product or service based on feedback.

4. Sell.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635372

Link Building With a Small Budget

By
Website Marketing
on November 13, 2009 7:19 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Link marketing can be expensive -- especially in competitive fields. Let's look at how a business with a small budget can accomplish the task, and get good rankings.

Donate Services for Publicity

Any business can employ this public relations strategy. It's all about donating your services to help nonprofits and community organizations.

Let's say your business is a day spa. Arrange for one of your massage therapist to visit a 911 call center to provide free massages once a week for a month. Then contact local media outlets, the mayor's office, community groups, and others.

Let as many people who could spread the word know about this. Your company will end up with great links, and a great deal of public exposure.

Why once a week for a month? Because you aren't a public relations firm, this allows time each week to reach out and make new contacts in the community. It also allows more opportunities to arrange photos, and video clips with the media.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635630

Can You Profit From Pay-Per-Call?

By
Website Marketing
on November 12, 2009 7:55 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Display advertising is on the ropes, search engines frown upon text links and the FCC has a few choice words about sponsored posts. Why is everyone trying to keep affiliates down? They aren't... really. What you as an affiliate do have going for you is that networks and merchants are innovating, and looking beyond traditional affiliate models towards solutions like Pay-Per-Call. But how can you leverage that as an affiliate to turn a profit?

Affiliate Networks are jumping on the Pay-Per-Call bandwagon left and right. Back in early August, WM reported that Linkshare opened its Pay-Per-Call service. Commission Junction followed suit and now also offers a similar program. Just today, ShareASale is the latest to formally provide a Pay-Per-Call program and is doing so for all of its 2500 merchants (after an exclusive beta).

"Pay-per-call offers a great new revenue opportunity for both merchants and affiliates," said ShareASale CEO Brian Littleton in a press release issued earlier. "Affiliate marketing is no longer just online. Consumers who were more difficult to reach in a purely online environment are now a new audience for affiliates to target. The system is simple to set up, easy to use, and integrates with a merchant's traditional online initiatives."

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/11/11/can-you-profit-from-pay-per-call.aspx

SEO for Twitter Content

By
Website Marketing
on November 11, 2009 8:27 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
The major search engines have a history of evolving their indexing capabilities to keep up with new types of digital content. First it was HTML text, then blog content, then multimedia files like videos, and more recently it was flash content. Now the search engines are indexing another type of content -- tweets!

That's right, for those of you who haven't heard, it's official -- Google has reached an agreement with Twitter to show tweets in their search results. While previously, Twitter profile pages may have been surfacing in the listings, now individual tweets can show up as a unique listing.

So, what does that mean for marketers? Well, just like when new types of content have been added to the search indexes in the past and we've had to adapt our strategies to optimize for this new content, we're going to have to do the same for tweets.

Question: How do you get your tweets in organic listings?

Answer: With this agreement only being announced a few weeks ago (October 21), there isn't a ton of data on what works and what doesn't from an SEO perspective. As anyone that has done SEO before knows, there's a lot of trial and error to determine what works when it comes to influencing organic positioning. That said, there are many thoughts on how marketers can both optimize their tweets, as well as leverage Twitter from a larger perspective to improve overall SEO results.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635565

Facebook Fan Pages 101

By
Website Marketing
on November 10, 2009 7:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Now that we have the basics of Facebook down, let's look at one of the best ways to leverage Facebook as a marketer. Facebook started out with the student in mind and soon graduated to cater to businesses.

Many people think LinkedIn is the place to be for professional social networking and Facebook is just for friends and family. However, many organization and businesses reach out every day on Facebook. One of the best ways is through Facebook pages.

Group Pages vs. Fan Pages -- Which Should You Use?

People have asked this question many times at my social media marketing training workshops. There is some confusion about which to use because both have overlapping features. It can be difficult to choose the best option.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635584

Seven Ways To Tap Social Shopping

By
Website Marketing
on November 9, 2009 7:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Last year's weak holiday results provide e-tailers with a relatively low hurdle to meet, or exceed, past performance. Doing more than just beating last year' s performance will be hard, especially in a year of restrained shopping, when consumers are looking franticly for "free shipping and handling" offers, sales, and coupons to keep their holiday spending costs down. One strategy marketers are using to support their merchandising efforts is social shopping, because it can have a powerful impact for a relatively low cost. It should be noted that social networks influenced 37 percent of shoppers in 2009, up from 24 percent in 2008, according to e-tailing group research.

As a form of marketing interaction, social shopping continues to evolve. Social shopping has expanded from dedicated social shopping sites like Kaboodle, StyleHive, and ThisNext (where less than 10 percent of U.S. online retailers have a presence) to broader social media sites, like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter (where consumers' various networks connect). Savvy marketers are just following their prospects and customers based on eMarketer's April 2009 assessment of the social networking sites used by U.S. online retailers; roughly three in five U.S. online retailers have a presence on Facebook.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635524

Web Design: Why Consistency Counts

By
Website Marketing
on November 5, 2009 10:06 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
If you're designing a Web site, you need to understand and adhere to one iron-clad rule: consistency is vital. You may think that consistency equals a boring design or a lack of imagination, but the opposite is true. It's crucial design attribute and creating a site without it can lose you customers.

We all look for consistency in the world around us. Whenever you open a reference book, you expect the table of contents to be in the front and the index at the back. You have learned from reading books over the years that this is the pattern that books follow.

If you were to open a book and find the table of contents in the middle and the index at the front, you would be confused. You wouldn't know how to navigate this book because the design breaks the rules that you have learned.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/building/article.php/3845786
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This page is an archive of entries from November 2009 listed from newest to oldest.

October 2009 is the previous archive.

December 2009 is the next archive.

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