The Week in Review

Valuing Links

How much should a client budget to build links? If you’re struggling to respond, this post might help. It offers an overview of the correlation between links and traffic, the premise that “new links drive rankings, which contributes some marginal new monthly traffic” and link-building ROI. Don’t forget that compelling content is foundational. (Search Engine Watch)

FairSearch.org Protests Google’s Travel Plans

While Google’s acquisition of travel company ITA is in the pending queue, a band of online travel companies have banded together to form FairSearch.org, a coalition that is attempting to kill the aforementioned acquisition. Travelocity, Expedia, TripAdvisor and other online travel companies are part of this group, which claims that Google’s purchase of ITA would push up prices and take away choices for consumers searching for travel online. (CNET)

Google Boost Targets Small, Local Businesses

Small, local businesses are a group that Google has yet to truly capitalize on. But with Google Boost, all that might change. “Boost allows business owners who have signed up for Google Places to set up sponsored ad campaigns from within their Places account. And it seeks to eliminate long-term management of those campaigns by automating them.” (Econsultancy)

The Importance of a Facebook Brand Page

Brand interactions on Facebook, including clicking the “Like” button, recommending a brand to friends and leaving messages on a brand name’s wall, are becoming more popular. Heading into the next year, social media budgets should factor in the increasing willingness of consumers to interact with branded pages, the importance of these interactions as a metric and the “Like” button outside of social media. (eMarketer)

Using Yahoo Answers to Drive Traffic

Yahoo Answers can be a nice tool for driving traffic to your blog. This post explains how to do this. The key is providing meaningful answers. Once you reach 250 points, you can include links in your answers, and that’s where the fun begins. (SEOmoz)

Google Instant is Already Having a Positive Effect on Search Advertising

According to Marin Software, ad impressions have increased more than 9 percent, clicks have risen more than 5 percent and advertisers have spent nearly 2 percent more after Instant’s debut on Sept. 8. (Search Engine Land)

Why E-mail Marketing is Still in Style

Here’s a helpful visual explanation of why e-mail marketing is still “in vogue,” despite all the new kids in town. For one, e-mail continues to offer the bigger bang for the buck compared to traditional forms of advertising. (Flowtown)

Consider This Before Shortening Links

Link shorteners are all the rage these days, as they drive tons of traffic to content. But before you use them, you might want to read this post. Stability, obfuscation, performance and privacy are the major issues with these shortened links. (O’Reilly Radar)

Affiliates and Cookie Overwriting

Digital Window decided to dig into the question of who overwrites who in the affiliate channel. The company looked at five brand advertisers in different sectors to see how many affiliates are usually involved in a sale, and to what extent their cookies overwrite each other. The three main takeaways are that the vast majority of transactions have only one referrer, almost all transactions take place within 24 hours of the click, and affiliates are more likely to overwrite affiliates that use the same primary method of promotion. (Econsultancy)

Roundup of Recent Mobile and Video Ad Offerings

The IAB doesn’t have a monopoly over the ad exchange ecosystem anymore. Take a look at what the likes of Adap.tv, BrightRoll, Microsoft and Mobclix are doing in the mobile and video realms. For buyers, the lack of inventory puts a hurdle in front of auction-based models. (ClickZ)

Mobile Ad Spending is Going to Surge, No Matter Who You Ask

According to eMarketer, mobile ad spending in the U.S. was $743.1 million, up 79 percent from the $416 million spent in 2009. This figure is expected to reach $1.1 billion in 2011, up 48 percent from 2010. By 2014, eMarketer expects mobile ad spending to boom to $2.5 billion. The company’s estimates are middle-of-the-road – Borrell Associates and JP Morgan are among the more aggressive forecasters, while IDC and Yankee Group are among the more conservative. (eMarketer)

SEO Myths About Website Usability

“Usability” is often thought of without the actual searcher in mind. When looking for a search usability expert, watch out for the following myths: 1) Design and optimize for the statistically average searcher/users; 2) I am the user; 3) People find/use my site all the time, therefore it’s user-friendly. (Search Engine Land)

AOL Rolling Out Devil to Non-AOL Sites

AOL’s Project Devil ad units have already been strewn across its own sites, but there have been sightings of Devil ads on non-AOL sites already. The new units are resulting in fewer impressions, but revenue has remained the same. Ad revenue is expected to rise as the ads eventually spread across more sites. (ClickZ)

Game Consoles Being Used in Various Ways

According to Knowledge Networks, many owners of game consoles use them to watch DVDs, Blue-ray discs and streamed/downloaded video. Usage varies across age groups, of course, but game consoles are proving to be important “transitional devices.” (CNET)

Advertisers Learn Sensitive Information About People

A recent research paper highlights the ability of advertisers (or malicious people posing as advertisers) to get their hands on very sensitive information about social network users, such as their sexual orientation or religion. Ads tailored to discover ages and sexual orientations succeeded, according to another study. (NYTimes.com)

4 Strategies for Successful Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) matters, obviously. Why? Because it’s driving significant amounts of traffic. Widgets and badges, content sharing, social sign-in, and social commenting are all keys to your SMO strategy. (Mashable)

Bigger Mobile Budgets for the Holidays

There are three “hiding places” that offer marketers a more holistic, quantitative view of mobile consumer behavior and better approximates mobile’s real impact on business: 1) search, 2) social and 3) local. Mobile sales don’t tell the whole story; position yourself to take for the holiday season and beyond. (Search Engine Land)

Groupon Stores

Groupon is set to unveil Groupon Stores, which will be Facebook-like pages for businesses to reveal deals to its fans. The company is calling this “the future of Groupon.” (Mashable)

Most iPad Owners Pay for Content

According to Nielsen, 63 percent of iPad owners have downloaded a paid app. Of this segment, 62 percent have paid for games, 54 percent for books, 50 percent for music, 45 percent for shopping, and 45 percent for news and headlines. iPad owners also access books, TV shows, movies and magazines on a more regularly than iPhone users. (Nielsen)

Have You Updated Your E-mail Template for Web 2.0?

Interactivity reigns in Web 2.0, thanks to social media. This should be changing the way you approach your e-mail marketing efforts. Since e-mail is now sharing the limelight with social media and mobile communications, e-mails must provide new utility, allowing users to change preferences, contact customer support or check out a product/service other than the one being promoted. Adding social links is also essential. (MediaPost)

5 Ways to See What Your Visitors Are Doing

Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Quantcast, Mint and Omniture are five tools that give you a glimpse into what your website visitors are doing. Be sure to get the help of your designer or programmer if you need help with the technical stuff. (Business Insider)

Using Social Media to Unite Lonely Consumers and Build Brand Loyalty

Thanks to social media, consumers feel more connected to people than ever before, even though it’s through a screen. Starbucks, Dell and Mountain Dew have done a good job of leveraging this into building a community of consumers who all like the same brand. (AdAge.com)

5 Website Changes That Hurt Your SEO

When you make a big change to your site, search engines need to determine whether your links are still valid. Changing your domain, URL structure, content, Whois record and theme can change how search engines see the inbound links to your website. (Search Engine Watch)

Dressing Like an SEO for Halloween

Just for kicks, here’s a post about how to dress like an SEO for Halloween. All you need is a receding hairline, an iPhone 4, a small patch of facial hair, a small car, thick-rimmed hipster glasses, cigarettes, a messenger bag with a corporate logo on it, a Dell laptop, an iPad, multiple charging cords, questionable T-shirts (or a Google Dance T-shirt), and Vans. (Search Engine Land)

Bad SEO: What Not to Do

Here’s a terrible SEO site that serves as a prime example of what not to do. Just look at the title tag, meta description, www vs. non-www, and keyword stuffing. (ZDNet)

Interactive Pre-Roll Ads Have Momentum

Pre-roll video ads have been hated on, and for good reason – they’re interruptive, creatively bankrupt and noninteractive. Nevertheless, the ad format has picked up some very vocal support thanks to its evolution into the realm of the interactive. Publishers are wary of the format, and advertisers are increasing demand, slowly. (ClickZ)

Content: For Traffic or Conversion?

Take a look at Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker to see how they attract (Cosmo) and convert (New Yorker). The good news is that you don’t have to choose between the two. (Copyblogger)

7 Advanced Questions About Quality Score Answered

For those who have an understanding of what Quality Score for Google AdWords is, here are seven tough questions and their respective answers. Among the topics are how having the keyword in the display URL or destination URL affects Quality Score, whether keywords with zero impressions lower your Quality Score at the account level and how long-tail keywords with near-zero impressions affect Quality Score on an entire campaign. (Search Engine Journal)

How to Find Your PPC Bid and Budget ‘Sweet Spot’

For B2B marketers, balancing lead quality and lead quantity is a huge challenge. An ongoing process of measuring and managing results associated with keyword bids and campaign budget levels is how B2B search advertisers will find their “sweet spot.” This can be done by proactively managing the cost of each keyword click based on ROI, using budgets to ensure that you’re getting the maximum volume of clicks available in the marketplace at this optimal click cost, and continually measuring the value each click returns. (Search Engine Land)