The Week in Review

The Week in Review

3 Ways to Spruce Up the Online Shopping Experience

Shoppers are still drawn to the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, but there are tactics e-tailers can implement to lure more of those shoppers their way: 1) include product recommendations and reviews, 2) make your site feel festive, and 3) create a tactile experience. (Econsultancy)

What’s New for E-mail in 2011?

“What’s the next new thing for e-mail next year?” This is a popular question these days. This writer has five responses: 1) we’re still trying to figure out what’s here now, along with the shifting rules of deliverability; 2) the “new” thing is the need to get back to the basics; 3) e-mail efforts need to get more social; 4) segmentation and targeting; 5) relevancy. (MediaPost)

Redefining What it Means to be a Mobile Marketer

Mobile marketers stand in a position to lead their companies toward the right customer-relationship strategies targeting the mobile consumer in this cross-channel-marketing world. This must start and end with customer experience, e-mail lists must be leveraged and a mobile/social campaign should be created. (ReadWriteWeb)

3 SEO Sales Pitches That Need to Be Updated

SEO sales pitches purporting to rank a site in MSN, Yahoo and Ask.com need to be updated. For MSN, the delineation between MSN (portal) and Bing (search engine) needs to be understood. For Yahoo, its Bing-powered nature needs to be grasped. For Ask.com, its shift away from being a search engine at all should quiet offers to rank sites there. (ZDNet)

Where is Search Headed?

Sashi Seth, senior vice president of search at Yahoo, answers a few questions about the search ecosystem. Among his points are that Yahoo is now focused squarely on the user experience, the back-end of search engines are starting to get better at understanding the master intent and dark horses (like Apple) need to be considered a search player as the realm becomes more mobile. (Search Engine Land)

Google Grows, Tries to Remain Nimble

Gone are the days when three Google employees could gather round a table, pump out a world-class product and have it delivered to the world. Now the search giant is lumbering along with a lot more weight to drag and it’s losing employees who aren’t interested in the waiting game. Nevertheless, Google isn’t lying down and taking it – the company is doing what it can to retain the nimbleness (and the talent) it once so easily had. (NYTimes.com)

SEO Meta Tags

Meta tags are a basic building block of SEO. Here’s a rundown of what makes good meta tags, what makes indifferent meta tags and what makes bad meta tags. (SEOmoz)

3 E-commerce Trends to Watch

As we enter 2011, here are three e-commerce trends to watch: 1) consumer focus on price (if a site can’t compete on price, it has to find another differentiator); 2) video and visual search; 3) technical SEO. (Search Engine Land)

Targeting is More Important Than Length for Online Video Ads

Video ad campaigns are more impacted by their targeting than the length of ads, according to a study from TidalTV. While CTR for 30-second video ads surpassed CTR for 15-second video ads by 11 percent, the longer ads resulted in a 10 percent decline in video completion rates. Also, targeted 15-second ads saw a 110 percent increase in CTR compared to untargeted 30-second ads, and a 29 percent lift in video completion rates. (MediaPost)

Ads in Social Media Drives Purchases

According to a study by Knowledge Networks and MediaPost Communications, 15 percent of social media users in the U.S. are more likely to buy brands that advertise in social media. Meanwhile, 32 percent of 15-to-54-year-old smart-phone users say they are more likely to purchase brands that advertise or have marketing messages in apps on their phones. (WebProNews)

10 Ways to Get More SEO Clients

Get in on the client action that many SEO consultants are getting. Among the 10 ways to build up your client base are to optimize your website/resume, speak at events and hold site clinics, be a guest blogger, create free tools, and get active in new forums. (SEOmoz)

Facebook Goes Search, Google Goes Social

Facebook and Google are trying to get all up in each other’s businesses. Facebook’s “socialness” is its clear strength and biggest threat to Google, which has apparently pushed back its “Google Me” effort until spring 2011. It’s apparent that it’s easier for Facebook to build out a useful search engine than it is for Google to build a useful social network. Though Facebook has yet to really step on Google’s advertising toes, it is already competing in the realm of communication. The list of the two companies’ overlapping products is lengthy, which makes this battle all the more interesting and consequential. (WebProNews)

LinkedIn Offers a ‘Share’ Button

LinkedIn just made the “share” button arena a bit more crowded. The social network unveiled a button that publishers can embed on their sites to enable readers to share content with LinkedIn users. (TechCrunch)

How Big Retailers Used Twitter on Black Friday

Observing how big brands use social networking tools can sometimes lead to some helpful tips and ideas. This article offers a rundown of how big retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and Target utilized Twitter on Black Friday. (ClickZ)

Dynamic Landing Pages

“The landing page is the hook on the end of your line. You can bait them with the ad text all day long, but if you can’t hook ‘em and reel ‘em in, the efforts are wasted.” So how do you do this? By making dynamic landing pages, which are landing pages that can be tweaked to create a page specific to each unique visitor. They can be targeted by keyword and IP addresses. There are, of course, best practices. (PPC Hero)

Click-Type Report Now Available for AdWords

Google introduced a new report for click types for AdWords. “With this added data, you’ll now have the ability to compare performance of each click type side by side. If certain click types perform well for your business, you may want to consider expanding them to other campaigns. Comparing click types by campaign, ad group or keyword will also highlight areas that need work.” (Inside AdWords)