Learning From Amazon to Increase Ecommerce Impluse Purchases. A Tour of the New Google Maps [15 Screenshots] Google announced an overhaul to Google Maps at last week’s Google I/O conference and, judging from what I saw on screen during the keynote, it looked very spiffy.
![A Tour of the New Google Maps [15 Screenshots]](http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/pic/th/tour-google-maps-screenshots-58042048)
It also looked like a pretty substantial change from the existing Google Maps, so I’ve been anxious to find time to sit down and give it a test drive. That’s what I’m doing in this post: Kicking the tires and making some notes on what it looks like, what it does, and what it might mean to small businesses. The first important thing to emphasize is that this is an overhaul strictly of maps.google.com; it doesn’t represent a change to the local search experience on google.com, which is what the vast majority of Google local searchers will see and use. I don’t know how many people begin a search on maps.google.com, but I suspect it’s a small percentage compared to those that begin on google.com. Mobile Marketing Spending Translates to Sales, Brand Lift. Spending on mobile marketing keeps rising, as brands learn the power of reaching consumers on these devices, and consumers become increasingly mobile-first.
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), in partnership with IHS Global Insight, studied US mobile marketing expenditures and their impact on sales for the “Mobile Marketing Impact Study,” released in May. The study found that this year spending on mobile marketing—including mobile advertising, mobile customer-relationship management and mobile direct-response marketing on nonmobile media—will reach $10.46 billion. By 2015, spending on the channel will approach $20 billion. Full service digital marketing – one man’s definition. They don’t make ’em like this anymore…or do they?
What, exactly, is a full-service digital marketing agency (besides a mouthful)? 5 Ways to Ruin Business Relationships on Twitter. It can take a lot of time and effort to build up trusting business relationships with people on Twitter. Unfortunately, it’s all too quick and easy to tarnish or destroy these. In this article, I’ll look at 5 ways to ruin your Twitter relationships. #1 – Forgetting your manners Manners cost nothing. 4 Steps To Becoming A Great SEO Copywriter. New to the Search Marketing Standard Blog?
Subscribe to our blog via our RSS feed and receive updates and tips. in Share Copywriting and SEO copywriting are two different things. Obviously both involve the basics: correct spelling, language, grammar, structure, organization, etc. and of course the topic should be relevant and interesting. However, SEO copywriting takes it one step further. To be a great SEO copywriter, follow these guidelines: 1. Search Marketing for Subscription Businesses. The recurring-revenue business model is certainly not a new one.
Newspapers, magazines, country clubs, cable television, and the infamous Columbia House Music Club (12 CDs for the price of 1! ) have all used various forms of subscriptions to earn a steady, predictable revenue stream from their customer base. And the allure of this pricing structure is rather obvious. Companies can significantly reduce their total marketing expenditure if they don’t have to acquire, and then re-acquire the same customers to make the same purchase.
Customers that are willing to commit to a particular brand or service gain the convenience of not having to repeat the purchase process as well as a perceived discount on their total cost of ownership. One of the biggest challenges facing marketers of subscription-based businesses comes in valuing new customers. 5 Reasons Brands and Businesses Earn Big with Guest Blog Posts. One of the largest constraints for most organic search and digital marketing campaigns is a lack of resources needed to advance search rankings and visibility.
Whether it is a limited amount of time, money, man power, or all of the above; businesses always lose when they are unable to create fresh, unique content on a regular basis. For businesses and brands that are serious about developing comprehensive search campaigns and are unable to actively create new forms of content due to limited resources, guest blogging is the solution. Brands that allow relevant authoritative personas to create unique content for their branded site stand to gain a plethora of organic search benefits. The positive results of accepting guest posts from the right people can range from tremendous levels of increased qualified traffic to acquiring significant volumes of credible links for search visibility. Publishing Guest Posts Will Save Your Time. Square Stand Making Payments Easier and Cooler for Merchants. [Infographic] Do Facebook Friend Recommendations Influence Purchasing?
The Importance of Being Seen: Viewability and Brands - Inside AdWords. Brand marketers since the “Mad Men” era have often sought insight to a simple question: ‘Was my ad seen?’
The answer was that your ad was published, your commercial ran, your online impression served on a web page, but it was impossible to say with certainty whether an ad was viewed or not. Thanks to leaps forward in digital technology and the hard work of many in the industry, it's now possible to measure whether an ad is viewable onscreen. Given this progress, it's not a matter of if this becomes the standard, but when. We support a viewable impressions standard and have been partnering with the industry to push this forward. Today we've reached an important milestone on this journey - Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for our viewability measurement solution, Active View, which we introduced last year.
"We are very pleased that Google has achieved accreditation for its Active View product" said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council. Figure 1. Ideas for Very Small Businesses to Market Their Own Websites. Sometimes very small businesses must rely on what they can do for themselves to keep their online marketing efforts fresh.
There has never been any argument that small budgets sometimes prohibit small businesses from getting agency help. That’s okay. If you do your due diligence and are careful, there’s no reason you cannot help your online presence, and revenue from your presence, by rolling up your sleeves and doing some of the work yourself. How Much is a Facebook Fan Worth? Study Says $174 and Rising. Study Finds Google's Penguin Update Getting Stricter Over Time.
A study by Portent, an Internet marketing company, shows that Google’s tolerance of spammy links to trigger a Penguin algorithm ranking drop has declined by 30% since the Penguin algorithm launched.
The study shows that of the 500,000 links found, Google has been steadily reducing its tolerance for webspam. Now, Google is likely to penalize sites with as little as 50 percent suspicious links in their link profiles, whereas 80 percent was required when Penguin first launched. Portent analyzed about 10,000 links pointing at each of the top 50 sites on the 2012 Inc. 5000 list. The Inbound Marketing Manifesto. Content strategists of the world unite!
Have you heard? Content marketing is the future. I hear you saying to yourself, “But you’re an inbound marketer, Rebecca, isn’t that statement just a tad self-serving?” It’s not just me. Look at the spike in interest over the past two years: Will A Watch or Glasses Be The Norm for Internet Users? 20 Critical Do's and Don'ts for Clickable Calls-to-Action [SlideShare] Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most critical inbound marketing tools. Whether they take the form of anchor text links, images, or buttons, CTAs are what motivate and direct your visitors to take a desired action, usually on a landing page.
This could mean anything from registering for an event, downloading content and converting into leads, or encouraging prospects to move further down your marketing funnel toward sales-readiness. But not all calls-to-action are effective at converting your visitors. And because we've worked with so many marketers over the years, we've seen our fair share of lackluster and underperforming CTAs in our day. SEO 2013: Why Content Marketing Is Still the Key. 5 UX Improvements to Increase Conversions. Just like bricks and mortar retailers, winning at ecommerce comes down to providing your visitors with the best user experience (UX). From the shoppers point of view, the best experience can be a simple as finding the lowest price, even on a poorly designed site with otherwise bad UX .
But, generally speaking, a better overall ecommerce UX translates into more conversions, better conversion rates and – ta da – higher sales. The problem is that creating a better UX can be a complex task with seemingly endless options, each of which must be researched, tested, implemented, including for different buying personas, color combinations, page designs, product layouts, calls-to-action, etc., etc., etc.. How to create the perfect infographic. Once a fun and useful way of presenting data in an easy-to-digest format, infographics have been overused to the point that their reputation is close to ruin. And yet the truth is that they are still a brilliant way of gaining shares and, more importantly, links back to your site. Our regular infographic roundup remains one of the most consistently popular posts each week.
HTTP 503: Handling site maintenance correctly for SEO. Sometimes, your site will need some downtime, so you can fix things or update plugins. Future versions of Firefox to block third-party ad cookies. Online advertising continues to grow by leaps and bounds, but that doesn't mean that life is easy for players in the digital ad ecosystem. 10 Oscar-Worthy Examples of Brands Newsjacking the Academy Awards.
While many people are critiquing the $1.6 million commercials that ran during the Oscars last night, we thought it'd be fun to take a look at something a bit less expensive and a bit more inventive -- the real-time newsjacking that occurred last night during the broadcast over one of our favorite social networks, Twitter. Three Leading Arguments for Semantic Technologies. INFOGRAPHIC: Exploring the Deep Web with Semantic Search. Video: The Internet of Things. The BBC has posted a new video discussing the Internet’s next frontier, particularly the Internet of Things.
According to the description of the video, “In its early days the internet was seen simply as a way of transferring data across large distances but it is now playing an ever increasing part in our lives. Sell Your Own Products, Affiliate Merchandise Or Both. 23 Tips on How to A/B Test Like a Badass. #SocialChat: The Little Social Sites You Should Not Overlook. Your Biggest Mistake in Measuring Social Media Success.
Facebook Launches a News Feed for Page Updates Only. How to get more from your Tweets - Infographic. New: Save Your Google Search Settings & Take Them With You. Facebook Most Effective Social Marketing Channel for SMBs (But They Want Social Media Help) Facebook is overwhelmingly the most effective social media marketing channel for small businesses, with exponentially more saying it’s better than Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and all other social networks. Groupon Visits the Bargain Basement. Curiosity & the Future of Robotics. Standing Up to Bullying with Machine Learning.
Getting SMART with SEO Strategy. Optimize Your Site to Sell Your Products. New Zealand Police Utilizing Semantic Search. Semanticweb.com - The Voice of Semantic Web Business. NZ Police deploy semantic search technology. Getting a Semantic Database Off the Ground. 27 Ways to Slice & Dice Your Email List for Better Segmentation. How Do I Get My Facebook Fans to Participate More on Our Page? 7 Great Posts. What is the Proper Keyword Density for SEO? Save Time Figuring Out Site Performance Changes: Take Notes.
5 Tips For More Impact From Social Media Participation. Google Merges Place Pages into Plus Pages. Define the new statistics from the Auction Insights report. Search engines driving less traffic to Facebook Pages: report. Nielsen Numbers Show Internet Users Up 15 Million Year Over Year. 10 Reasons to Develop for Android First. Ambitious Plans for the Open Data Institute.
All The Way To Semantic, Model-Driven Computing. SEO & UX – Working together to make your site better. 8 Common Twitter Questions from Small Business Owners. Target Marketing: Brilliant or Creepy? - John W. Ellis. Google's Freshness Algorithm in Action. Experian and comScore Differ on Whether Bing Search Has 30% Share. Most Popular Digital Tool for Marketers? E-mail. 3 Easy Ways to Increase Web Traffic With Social Bookmarking. Bing Introduces 3-Column Search Results With Snapshots, Social Sidebar. Google Maps For Android Now With Offers and More. Google adds more semantic smarts to its search engine. New Resource for Web Developers – Add Linked Data to HTML with RDFa.info. RDFa. Google News Remodel to Include Google+ Conversations. Pragmatic Approaches to the Semantic Web. Applying Semantic Technology to Big Data. Volume, Emotion, Sponsorship: What Brands Have An Edge on Social Media Strategies? Is HTML5 Web 3.0?
Yle's InFormation: If not RDF, then what? Let’s Talk about Semantics. French Election Watchers Protest Information Ban on Twitter. Semantic Web Programming. Web 3.0 a revolutionary shift [Colin Cesvette] Web 2.0 is so over. Welcome to Web 3.0 - Jan. 8, 2009. What is Web 3.0? Semantic Web & other Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English. Semantic Web.