The Week in Review

$5 Billion Will Be Spent on Mobile Advertising in the US in 2015

According to Smaato, $1.24 billion will be spent on mobile advertising in the U.S. in 2011, and this figure is expected to rise to $5.04 billion in 2015. The main reasons will be the huge active market of mobile subscribers who browse on their phones, along with the blossoming ad market. (TechCrunch)

The Lifecycle of a Linkbait

Here’s a refreshing break from blocks of text: a visual depiction of the lifecycle of a linkbait, defined as “content created for the purpose of garnering links from other websites, particularly blogs.” The entertaining visual guide takes you from brainstorming to production to publication and promotion to reviewing and enhancing. (Local SEO Guide)

International Focus on Social Networking and Marketing

Some of the most popular social networking sites have names that most Americans haven’t heard of, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Taking your marketing talents overseas could be beneficial, partly because not many U.S.-based companies have explored those waters (read: less competition/noise). (Search Engine Land)

Call-to-Action Makeover

If your call-to-action (CTA) buttons just aren’t doing it for your e-mail marketing campaigns, give them a makeover. Change the wording and use actionable words, focus on location, and use shapes, colors, sizes and highlighting to emphasize your CTA. (MailerMailer)

Facebook Advertising

There’s nothing wrong with using Facebook advertising as a way to drive traffic to your website, without all that fan base-building stuff. Facebook ads have no keywords, but they have likes. They’re accurate and extensive and cost less than a third of what AdWords costs you. You can go with direct sales, e-mail list building or just plain old traffic. (Search Engine Journal)

5 Reasons Why Working from Home (or Starbucks) Isn’t a Good Idea

The idea of working from home is more appealing to our ears than it is in reality, as many of us know. Your productivity is slowed down, you don’t have space to think, the line between work and play is blurred, and building a team is hard. If you’re starting something, get an office space for cheap. (VentureBeat)

Blekko Makes Some Noise

Blekko is not the sound you make after a heavy night of drinking. It’s a new search engine that has distinguishing features – and no, it’s not trying to topple the almighty, untouchable Google. The new kid on the block is aiming to be less spammy than Google and gives searchers the ability to narrow their searches to categories with the use of a simple “slashtag.” There are already those forecasting doom for the search engine, which has already unveiled some SEO-related data for all to see – simply search for your site on Blekko and click on “seo” beneath your site’s slot. (CNET, Business Insider, Search Engine Land)

Data Sets for SEO Use

Any SEO is game for some juicy data, especially when they come in large doses. So check out Geocities, SEM Rush, Twitter Census and Linkscape, among other resources. (SEOmoz)

Chrome Expands, IE Languishes, Firefox and Opera Remain Steady

The browser war continues to rage on and Chrome continues to gain ground, according to recent data from Net Applications. In September, Internet Explorer had 59.7 percent of the market, followed by Firefox with 22.9 percent, Chrome with 8.5 percent, Safari with 5.3 percent and Opera with 2.3 percent. (CNET)

Photos as Web Content

Jakob Nielsen discusses how users view photos on Web pages. Using eyetracking data, he concludes that photos with substance and relevance attract users’ eyes, while “fluffy” pictures are largely ignored. (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Retail E-commerce Up 9%

According to comScore, U.S. retail e-commerce sales rose 9 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, reaching $32.1 billion. This marked the fourth consecutive quarter of growth. Books & Magazines (excl. digital downloads) was the top-performing online product category, followed by Computers/Peripherals/PDAs, Computer Software (excl. PC games) and Consumer Electronics. (comScore)

Ads Invade Twitter Timelines

Twitter has begun tossing advertisements into its users’ timeline of tweets. The foray into this new stage of monetization will start on Hootsuite. The countdown to backlash has already begun. (ReadWriteWeb)

What to Do When Search Ads Don’t Work

Google AdWords seems like the solution to every business’s customer-acquisition needs, but that’s not true. Nevertheless, giving up too soon on search ads doesn’t prove to be a solution either. Four tips for businesses struggling to find success with AdWords and search advertising in general are: don’t make assumptions, get creative, take advantage of brand keywords and track your conversions. (Econsultancy)

Top 10 Domains on Twitter

Not surprisingly, bit.ly is the top domain on Twitter, included in 33 percent of all tweets. It’s followed by twitpic.com (5 percent), tl.gd (4 percent) and tinyurl.com (4 percent). Bit.ly is also the top host of malicious sites on Twitter, accounting for 41 percent of such sites in Twitter feeds, followed by twitthis.com with 13 percent and tinyurl.com with 11 percent. (ReadWriteWeb)

8 Ways to Cut Down Your Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors that hit a page and don’t visit any other pages on your site. To decrease this rate on your site, make sure to make data-informed decisions, utilize profiling and segmentation, and improve loading times, among other things. (Mashable)

Search is Top Method of Product Discovery (Sorry, Social Networking Sites)

Search engines are far and away the most common form of product discovery online, according to a study commissioned by ATG. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they find products through search engines, while only 8 percent said they discover products on social networking sites. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Acquires Drop.io, Has a Mobile Announcement This Week

Facebook acquired the file-sharing site Drop.io last week. It’s a talent acquisition, or an “acqui-hire.” Facebook also has a special mobile event scheduled for Wednesday. Your guess about what it could be about (Facebook phone?) is as good as anyone else’s. (CNET, TechCrunch)

23 Rules for Writing for the Web

Here are 23 “rules” for writing well for the Web. Among them are to quickly pour out your thoughts, keep sentences short, use sub-headers and avoid jargon. What do you think? (Oh – that’s another one of the rules.) (Econsultancy)

PeerTransfer Secures First Round of Venture Financing

PeerTransfer is a Web service that specializes in international money transfers and payments. It got its first round of financing yesterday, worth $1.1 million. The service aims to combat all the inefficiencies that banks are saddled with. (NYTimes.com)

Facebook Users Are Most Active at 3 p.m. Eastern

According to Virtue, a social media management company, the most conversations on Facebook happen at 3 p.m. Eastern time. The study also found that Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern is consistently the busiest period of the week. Also, posts published in the morning tend to perform better than those published in the afternoon. (Mashable)

How to Dress Like an SEO for Halloween (for the Ladies)

If you want to look like “the coveted SEO Lady” for Halloween, just be sure to go with whatever hair you’ve got, choose a phone for its functionality, bring your laptop (covered with stickers) around with you, carry around your microphone, wear jeans, wear industry shirts that actually fit you, wear footwear that will stand out from the crowd, surround yourself with creepy guys, and keep your girls close by your side. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Unveils Friendship Pages

Facebook introduced Friendship Pages yesterday. These pages show all the content and connections shared by two people who are friends on the social networking site. This includes tagged photos, wall posts and comments. “By allowing users to focus on a single connection, Facebook will help many realize just how integral the service has been to the formation of deep and long-lasting friendships.” (Inside Facebook)

25 Common SEO Mistakes

Mistakes are great teachers, so click on through and learn something. Among the biggest mistakes many SEOs make are setting Google AdWords Keyword Tool to “Broad” match, not using your customer’s vocabulary, setting up a free hosted blog, doing too much internal linking and not using a variety of anchor text. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Expanding Spam Filter Testing

Facebook is expanding its test of a spam filter for posts to the walls of Pages. While Pages need to allow free discussion to boost engagement, it offers spammers an easy opportunity to take advantage. Nailing this down should calm brands’ fears regarding establishing a Facebook Page. (Inside Facebook)

Bling Nation Allows Consumers to ‘Like’ Businesses at Check-out

Bling Nation’s “FanConnect” platform allows consumers to “Like” a business on Facebook and check-in on Foursquare simply by waving their mobile phone near a near-field communications reader. For businesses, this means getting detailed analytics on their customers, which can be used to target promotions and marketing efforts. (ReadWriteWeb)

SMO Has Usurped SEO

Emphasis on SEO has shifted attention away from creating great content and toward misleading goals of “keywords, hacks, paid links and technical engineering that their audience doesn’t know or care about.” The Facebook/Bing partnership signals the end of SEO and the rise of SMO – social-media optimization. “SMO strategy means appealing to the audience, not an intermediary; knowing what drives interest; and activating people’s desire to consume and share.” (paidContent.org)

Taobao.com Wants to Conquer the West

Taobao.com is the “eBay of China,” and it’s eyeing the European and American markets, starting by allowing Chinese buyers to purchase items from sellers in those Western markets. This might be the disruption that the online auction market needs. (Business Insider)

10 Ways to Follow the Right Twitter Users

Sifting through all the Twitter handles and manually connecting with the right ones is an arduous task. Among the 10 ways you can make this process more efficient is to look through lists, see who your influencers and colleagues are talking to regularly and comb through hashtags. (Flowtown)