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Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines. Is Google “Hiding” Crucial AdWord Options? In the AdWords interface, hidden information and default opt-in settings work against the advertiser and make it hard for them to exert full control over paid search advertising campaigns. In fact, the interface sometimes feels like it’s designed in a way that it can appear to a casual observer that nothing is missing. Does that mean Google is intentionally being evil? Well, “hiding the banana” certainly benefits the company and can increase revenues if advertisers are forced to use less precision.
In this article, I’ll provide some useful reminders of what to look harder for in the AdWords interface. Negative Keyword Options Google definitely plays hide the banana with negative keyword options. First, advertisers have to scroll long and hard to find the option in the interface. In terms of keywords, there’s more hide the banana. Default Mobile Advertising Option Default Display Network Option Finally, it’s worth debating whether the new term “display” is a euphemism.
Twitter’s US Adoption At 8%, Report Says. Eight percent of Internet users in the US are Twitter users, and the service is more popular among African-Americans and Latinos than white Internet users. Those are some of the findings from a new Pew Research Center report. Pew surveyed more than 2,200 US adult web users during November and asked, “Do you use Twitter?” As you can see on the chart below, 8% of all respondents said yes.
And, breaking it down further, females, young adults, and city dwellers are more likely to use Twitter. And Twitter is more popular among African-American and Latino Internet users than it is among Caucasians. The Pew report includes some additional results from two smaller surveys conducted in October. The types of activity those 102 Twitter users conduct on Twitter varies from 72% saying they post personal updates, to only 24% saying they post their location on Twitter. There’s more discussion on Techmeme. Leveraging The Tension Between Conversion Optimization & SEO. In today’s post I am going to discuss the importance of conversion optimization (or landing page optimization), why it is critical to online marketing success and how it interacts with SEO.
I am not going to cover conversion optimization in as much depth as the team that writes the conversion science column, but will set the stage for understanding the way it impacts SEO. There are a few major factors which are at the root of conversion optimization, such as: Where the user is in the conversion process. Are they ready to buy, or are they just browsing for info? Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have long pushed us to understand that people have different personas that we need to cater to. How people normally interact with content.
This includes things like a tendency to be immediately drawn to an image, or to read from left to right (or right to left in some countries), or to be drawn to certain colors more than others. The goal of your web site. When does conversion typically occur? Gizmodo. Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done. Ge.tt Is a Brilliant, Real-Time File-Sharing Pipe, No Add-ons Required. Why You Shouldn't Switch Your Email to Facebook. The Five Best Chrome Webapps That Aren't Just Bookmarks. @philosopher_dog: While I'm not the biggest fan of the app store, I do think they have their advantages. When the Mac app store was first announced, I was pissed, until I realized it's really not that different from a Linux repository—it really makes it a lot easier for the user to find and install the software they need. :-/ And I love my netbook.
I'll hunch over it for a few seconds if I'm on the run and need to fix a post or something like that, but for the most part I use it when I'm sitting on my couch watching tv. It's much, much easier to sit there and IM or browse on a netbook than it is to sit there with my giant 15" MacBook Pro. @Whitson Gordon: You still have good enough eyes evidently! @philosopher_dog: I agree about Apple being a control freak. @Whitson Gordon: Doesn't Ububtu have the option to enable the universe and mulitverse repositories? TechCrunch. Keep Legs Apart to Prevent Laptop Heat from Hurting Fertility. WSI Digital Marketing Blog. What is a Long Tailed Keyword… and why do I want one? | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. No the keyword “alligator” would not qualify… unless of course you sold alligators.
Even then that single word is not what I am referring to. “alligator shoes” is better, but not quite the long tail I was looking for. How about “alligator shoes for women”? Now we’re heading in the right direction… Long Tail Keywords are search phrases that combine 3 or more words. Let’s take something that I am a little more familiar with: “website marketing”. Website DesignWebsite HostingWebsite portfoliosNothing to do with anythingEtc. “website marketing” is better, but still awful competitive, and not nearly as targeted as it can be. “website marketing company orange county” is about as long-tailed as you want to get. There are 4 things that I want you to take away from this article: At the end of the day, I would rather have 5% of the traffic from 300,000 searches than 0% of the traffic from 192 million searches.
Business Owners Across the Globe Learn How Google’s New ‘Place Search’ Impacts Their Online Brand | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. Today was the encore session of our special webinar: “How Google’s New ‘Place Search’ Feature Impacts Your Business – Learn to Stay Competitive.” As always, it was a great turnout and WSI is more than happy to facilitate these educational forums aimed to keeping your business on the forefront of the digital marketing space! Business owners and marketing professionals from around the world tuned in for expert insight into online techniques and best practices for adapting to the latest game-changer Google made with the launch of their Place Search feature. All-in-all, this special presentation was geared to answering one question that is undeniably on the minds of all marketing savvy business owners: “In light of Google’s new Place Search, how can my company stay competitive online?” And with that concern in mind, our webinar offered up strategic guidelines for optimizing your business’ Google Place listing.
Anatomy of a Facebook Business Page | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. Just like the IRS insists that you separate your personal finances from your business finances, the same is true with your Facebook Personal page and your Facebook Business Page. Sure, it’s OK to have fun on your business page; in fact, it’s desirable. But at the end of the day, it does represent your business. There are entire whitepapers ready to write themselves about the type of content to post on your business page, marketing the pages, etc., but what I want to focus on now is the branding of your page. The average Facebook user is a fan of 9 Fan Pages. 41% of them use Fan Pages to let their friends know what products they like and support.
At a minimum, you should upload a profile picture that tells your followers who you are and what you have to offer. Here is an example of our profile or “badge”. The information on our badge works for us. Notice that we have a “Find us on Facebook” icon on the bottom of the badge. Finally, you might even consider custom or out-of-the-box aps. Social Networking: The Future. Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Read Part I and Part II first. This series is an adaptation of a recent talk Suster gave at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking.” You can watch the video here , or you can scroll quickly through the Powerpoint slides embedded at the bottom of the post or here on DocStoc. Follow him on Twitter @msuster.
In my first post I talked about the history of social networking from 1985-2002 dominated by CompuServe, AOL & Yahoo! 1. Right now our social graph (whom we are connected to and their key information like email addresses) is mostly held captive by Facebook. Facebook will succumb to pressure and over time make this available to us to allow us more choice in being part of several social networks without having to spam all of our friends again. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. What social media tools are you most likely to use? | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. Social Media (Web 2.0) can be found almost everywhere on the web. The online viewing public has shifted towards a more social media approach and many popular search engines are already incorporating social media results in their complex search engine algorithms.
Even though Social Media (Web 2.0) has been around for quite some time, many online businesses are following this popular digital marketing trend to market their products, services and to establish their brand online. Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing (SMM) allows you to promote your brand by making your presence known on targeted social media channels and tools.
These tools include blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, video and image sharing, instant messaging, forums, etc. Popular social media channels include Linkedin, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg, Twitter and YouTube. Each social media channel that you target usually requires its own rules and strategies that needs to be developed. Do you know your website audience? | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. You want to attract people who are interested in what you have to offer. Knowing who your audience is and what they are looking for is critical. Your website needs to focus on a specific segment of people with a specific need. Many people try to make their website be too broad and be everything for everybody. The truth is that if you build a website for everyone, it will attract no one. Build your site to suit the taste of your ideal customer. You do not just want to attract their interest. This affects the color and look of your site.
You have the solution to their problem; you are a problem solving service. They buy, they call, they sign-up or they download. Learn more about digital marketing tools, techniques and best practices for engaging your online customer and persuading them to take action on your site! Category:SiteTags:conversion architecture, Digital Marketing, website audience, website conversion, website visitors, Written by: Francois Muscat. PR, Blogging and Following | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. Blogging is great and we can all benefit from it. It is keyword rich, full of valuable information and links can be added in the comments which direct people back to your website. But not always. This depends if the blog is set up with a “nofollow.” For example, a WordPress blog is a “nofollow” blog by default. So what is “nofollow”?
“Nofollow” is a link attribute that lets websites tell search engines that a particular link is not relevant to their site. Surely a great blog is one with content and discussion that you are actually interested in; content that is not just there for its linking potential. Public relations is not about nofollow or dofollow tags; it’s not all about backlinks either.
Read more about how your business can develop a customized content marketing strategy to help you gain brand visibility across the Internet. Encore Session of Special Webinar: How Google's New "Place Search" Feature Impacts Your Business | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. Online PR Progress : WSI Digital Marketing Blog. When the Internet was created, I imagine no one really understood its full potential, and certainly no one would have predicted where we are now. When people started using the Web it was for the occasional search and perhaps the odd email. As things moved on and developed, we found emails became a more common place because it was a quicker way to make contact with someone, especially in business. E-commerce was developed and people started to search products and services online. People started to realize that the whole world was open to them and not just their local store.
The Internet meant that companies really had to offer the very best service possible, the best products and good prices too. Search Engine Optimization meant that people could push their website closer to the top, above the competition. Social media changed everything. Now, we have gone around full circle. With social media, we have gone back to being able to “speak” to the shop keeper again. Complimentary Whitepaper! The Power of Email Marketing & Social Media Marketing | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. We are less than a day away from WSI’s last free webinar of 2010, “The Power of Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing.” And just in the nick of time, is the release of our complimentary whitepaper to supplement the invaluable insights and tips to be shared during tomorrow’s webinar sessions. More and more, business owners and marketing savvy professionals like yourself are learning the how-to’s of leveraging the latest digital marketing tools and techniques. So the focus for tomorrow’s webinar will be to educate you on taking your online strategy one step farther by combining two essential online marketing tools: email marketing and social media.
Separately – as you may already know – these tools provide outstanding outlets for generating new leads, nurturing existing clientele and for engaging with your customers online. But tomorrow, we’re set to illustrate the endless possibilities of coupling email with social media. Some whitepaper highlights include: Does my low click-through-rate cost me more? | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. The great thing about Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is that you only pay when someone who is looking for your products or services actually clicks on your ad and goes to your website. If only a few people who search on your keywords actually click through, no big deal right? After all, you are only paying for the ones that do. Not so fast…. There is a little thing Google calls their “Quality Score.” The Google Quality Score is determined by a variety of different factors, but I want to focus on only one for now: Click-through-rate (CTR).
That is the percentage of the times that your ad has the “potential” for being seen on the search results, verses the actual times it is clicked on. Note that I said the “Potential”. Your quality score is updated often. Let’s do the math: Suppose your competitor is paying $2.00 per click for a certain keyword, and on average they get about 100 clicks each day. What are some of the factors that affect CTR?
Top 3 Tips for Your Business’ PPC Campaigns & Landing Pages | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. In spite of the size of your business, its industry or the nature of your digital marketing strategy, I am sure that we can all agree on one thing: There is very little point in spending money attracting people to your company’s website if your pages aren’t doing the job properly! Poorly implemented pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and ineffective landing pages will give you nothing but a high bounce rate, a nonexistent ROI, and pathetic conversion rates.
So rather than wasting precious time and money (for both you and your online customers) here are 3 of my PPC campaign and landing page tips to that will work to boost your conversion rate and turn online visitors into paying customers. 3 PPC & Landing Page Tips to Attract Your Online Customers 1. Actually create a landing page! It might seem simple enough, but using your site’s home page as your landing page is one of the most common mistakes among business owners on the Internet. 2. 3. Complimentary Whitepaper! Conversion Architecture: The Key Steps to Converting Traffic into Business | WSI Digital Marketing Blog. 420M People In China Have Internet Access, 99% Use Baidu For Search. Smashing Magazine. Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers - Smashing Magazine. Multivariate Testing in Action: Five Simple Steps to Increase Conversion Rates - Smashing Magazine.
Mashable. Is Twitter About to Let Businesses Claim Locations? Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline. More Than 250 Million People Use Facebook on a Daily Basis. Mark Zuckerberg to Donate Most of His Wealth to Charity. You Can Now Log in to MySpace with Facebook.
Each Month 250 Million People Use Facebook Connect on the Web. The Future Will Be Personalized. Chinese Woman Sentenced to Labor Camp Over Tweet. How Social Media Is Changing the Way Movies are Promoted. Startups. Facebook Makes Major Announcement: Is It E-Mail? [LIVE] Twitter’s Official Analytics Product Has Arrived. Who Links To Your Site Matter...A Lot | WSI Digital Marketing Blog.
Paper.li Brings Its Daily News Aggregator to Facebook. LinkedIn CEO: Yahoo Isn't Over. LinkedIn Launches Share Button. Ron Conway’s Crystal Ball: 12 Startups On The Cusp. Uploading 101 with Professor Compressor. Google Cleans Up Messy Data with Refine. The Unprecedented Rise of Apple iOS and Other Internet Trends [STATS] Facebook Announces Special Event: Is It About to Overhaul Messages? HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence. SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Tools & Software to Rank Better. Answers to the SEO Professional's Litmus Test.