The Week in Review

How to Capture Broken Inbound Links

The problem with link building is that you’re typically relying on someone else to do something that’s important to you. "So what do you do when after making the big effort to find the right, relevant website, identifying the right technical contact on that site, and asking that person for a link, but they toss a typo in the URL that points to a non-existent page?" If the broken link at least as your domain name correctly spelled, the problem may be solvable yet. (Search Engine Land)

Principles for Landing-Page Layouts

When creating a landing page, make sure to: 1) emphasize importance but beware of banner blindness; 2) use a consistent graphic style; 3) avoid horizontal rules or separators; 4) keep important elements above the fold; 5) avoid animation; 6) connect with color; 7) choose images that support the visitor’s task. (ClickZ)

How to Define Your URL for SEO

Defining a URL for SEO is choosing a structure that’s SEO-friendly. This can be done by following five steps: 1) keep it simple, 2) include keywords, 3) choose your keywords carefully, 4) use long-tail keywords and 5) pick a URL you can stick with. (Optify)

U.S. Mobile Ad Spend to Surpass $1 Billion This Year

According to eMarketer, mobile ad revenues in the U.S. are on track to exceed $1 billion in 2011. Increased confidence from advertisers and the improved scale for advertisers are driving this growth. (paidContent)

Updating Old Link-Getting Tactics

Article marketing and reciprocal linking are two old-school linking tactics that can be updated with some simple tweaks. For example, for article marketing, try your hand at writing an ongoing series and leveraging that content into an e-book. (Link Spiel)

Facebook Enhances Page Insights and Unveils New Ad Unit

Facebook introduced a new "People Talking About This" metric, along with "Friends of Fans," "Weekly total each" and analytics for up to 500 recent brand posts. The social network also unveiled its "Premium Ad Product," which is designed to promote page posts. (ClickZ)

SEO for the iPad

The "tablet revolution" is no joke. Here’s a look at what SEO professionals should take away from it. Among the topics covered are the locations/situations where the iPad is most used, conversion-rate optimization, pagination and tabbing. (SEOmoz)

7 Steps Toward Dominating Google SERPs

Gone are the days of search engine results pages (SERPs) consisting of just 10 site listings and the occasional pack of local listings. With universal search, SERPs now include images, news and videos, among other things. Here are pointers for optimizing assets like images, video, news and local to lift your Google SERP visibility. (Search Engine Watch)

The Behavioral Psychology of SEO

Here’s a table listing the common sources of behavioral bias that people often find themselves subject to, tweaked to apply to SEO professionals. Before diagnosing a website, maybe we should diagnose ourselves. Among the behavioral biases covered are illusion of control, anchoring bias and information hoarding. (Coconut Headphones)

Mobile SEO and the Need for Descriptive Links

Generating descriptive links that tell search engines the whole story is difficult, especially when it comes to those tiny mobile screens the size of sticky notes. One solution is to make better use of copy links. "It’s already considered an SEO best practice to try to embed bits of blue text into your content, whenever you happen to reference a fact or feature that can be found on another page." (Search Engine Land)

How to Measure Social Media Lead-Generation Efforts

While there’s no set standard for social media measurement, there are guidelines to help businesses show off the benefits of social media for an organization. Analytics; engagement; opportunity; conversion; and setting, testing and measuring goals are all part of the process of measuring the effectiveness of your social media lead-generation efforts. (HubSpot)

The Key to Effective SEO Elevator Pitches

A simple Venn diagram shows that SEO is where users/searchers meet search engines. This means a Web developer thinks not just of search engines, but of what people search for and what they expect to see on pages after they click on links seen on Google, Yahoo or Bing. (Search Engine Land)

6 Helpful Facebook Marketing Infographics

Research shows that more than 90 percent of social marketing happens on Facebook. Here are six infographics that cover tips, tactics and insights into the realm of Facebook marketing. They touch on topics like the history of advertising on Facebook, the anatomy of a fan and Twitter vs. Facebook. (Jeff Bullas)

Chrome Expected to Overtake Firefox by Year’s End

According to data from StatCounter, Google’s Chrome Web browser is on track to possibly overtake Firefox as the No. 2 browser worldwide behind Internet Explorer. Data from Net Applications points to Chrome leapfrogging Firefox by mid-2012. (Computerworld, ReadWriteWeb)

Bing Is Working on ‘Tiger’ for Faster Search Results

“Tiger” is the new index-serving technology Bing is incorporating globally. The back-end search infrastructure would deliver faster and more relevant search results to users. This echoes Google’s Caffeine update. (Search Engine Watch)

Google+ Won’t Be Annoyingly Flooded With Ads

With plenty of revenue streams, Google is capable of making Google+ an ad-free zone. The company recently confirmed that monetizing its social network is not “the highest priority. And it would be premature to come up with that before we understand how it’s used. But if we do a good job of serving users, we can stick to the Google philosophy that ads are a kind of tax on the product.” (The Next Web)

Google Analytics Premium Is Unveiled

Google launched a paid version of Google Analytics, which will process higher volumes of page views and give additional support. It’s not so much about features as it is about guaranteed availability, dedicated services and support. But the question is, do you need it? (Search Engine Land)

3 Holiday SEO Projects

The end of the year is nearing, but there’s still time to implement strategies from the three pillars of SEO: technical tactics, content optimization and link building. Do this via microdata, freebies and link harvesting. (Search Engine Watch)

Link Building vs. Link Attraction

You should be focusing on link attraction rather than just on link building. Link attraction will require you to attract natural links while developing really compelling, magnetic material. (Vertical Measures)

How to Boost Traffic Volume Without Adding New Keywords

Adding new keywords and refining match types isn’t necessarily the fastest way to increase volume. “Before embarking on a long-tail keyword expansion effort, marketers therefore need to evaluate whether or not they have done everything they can to maximise the volume from their existing keywords.” Three tips are: 1) don’t let budgets constrain top performing keywords, 2) try out “accelerated delivery” and 3) expand your reach with keywordless ads. (Econsultancy)

Internet Ad Revenues Are up 23% in the First Half of 2011

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet ad revenues reached $14.9 billion in the first half of 2011, up 23.2 percent from the $12.1 billion reached in the first half of 2010. Display advertising totaled more than $5.5 billion, up 27.1 percent. Digital video totaled $891 million, up 42.1 percent. (IAB)

3 Smart Uses of Paid-Search Campaigns

Paid search is primarily used to enhance your company’s online presence and drive more traffic to your site, but that’s not all. Three useful ways to use paid search are: 1) landing-page testing, 2) finding new keywords and 3) "getting in the game." (HubSpot Blog)

Say ‘No’ to SEO Shortcuts

Here’s a cautionary tale of a client who spent two years building up his readership, to whom he sent biweekly newsletters to. Then he got greedy and bought 100,000 more emails to add to his list. As a result, his email campaign was frequently tagged as spam and was consequently shut down. "He effectively hobbled a huge portion of his SEO, not to mention the damage it did to his online reputation – all because he tried to rush it!" SEO is not something you can rush or force to happen. (Search Engine Journal)

Link-Directory Best Practices for SEO

It’s time to rethink link directories. The key is to utilize different directories for different purposes. Here’s a look at: 1) Web directories, 2) social directories and 3) local citation directories. "Just as you shouldn’t rely solely on directory links, you shouldn’t ignore them either. The goal is a diverse and blended link profile." (SEOmoz)

5 Ways Guest Blog Posts Can Help Your SEO

If you’re struggling to generate enough content to keep your blog relevant and fresh, consider opening up to guest authors/blog posts. Here are five potential SEO benefits: 1) more content for spiders, 2) more content for readers, 3) more content for your social media marketing campaigns, 4) targeting different keywords and 5) generating more inbound links. (Daily SEO Tip)