The Week in Review

Google’s Mobile Click-to-Call

Google is getting a sizable portion of its mobile revenues from its new click-to-call ad tool, which provides an important lesson on the power of online interaction to prompt offline actions, especially for mobile users. A senior product manager for Google said campaigns with this click-to-call feature have click-through rates that are 6-8 percent higher than those that don’t. (GigaOM)

Facebook’s Future with Deals and Places

Here’s an interview with Emily White, senior director of local for Facebook. She discusses the future of Places and Deals, and whether or not Deals is meant to be a Foursquare killer. (eMarketer)

5 Social Marketing Predictions for 2011

It’s near the end of 2010, and that means it’s time for predictions for 2011. This post lists five social marketing predictions for 2011: 1) Facebook will hit the 1 billion mark; 2) Foursquare will remain a niche; 3) Groupon will be 2011’s version of Twitter; 4) Offline will become social thanks to connected TV; and 5) Google won’t unveil a social network. (Search Engine Land)

More Than 1 in 5 Americans Will Own Tablets by 2014

According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, more than one in five Americans will own a tablet by 2014, and 37 percent of them will own them for business. Browsing the Internet, e-mail and reading e-books/newspapers will be the most popular activities on tablets. For business users, popular activities will include business correspondence, online meetings/Web conferences, marketing and training. (VentureBeat)

E-mail Marketing Trends and Opportunities in 2011

Companies should be keeping an eye on m-commerce and apps, texting campaigns, video, and social media budgets in 2011. (MailerMailer)

5 Links-Building Predictions for 2011

Among the five predictions about link building are that brand names will be used more often in place of keyword-based anchor text, there will be more focus on quality and less on quantity, and there will be less emphasis on PageRank and more on authority. (Search Engine Journal)

Blekko, Bing and Facebook Likes

Bing was the center of a healthy helping of buzz because of its announced integration of Facebook Likes into its search results. Blekko, another search engine, is taking a more aggressive approach by integrating the Social Graph into search. All of this points to an intriguing future for search and its merging with social. Like data could be the new algorithm, or at least a major influencer. (Search Engine Land)

Is Explicit Permission a Must?

The short answer is, “not always.” The longer answer is a bit more nuanced, of course, and has recently evolved. (MediaPost)

A Visual Breakdown of Facebook vs. Twitter

If you’re a visual learner, this engaging chart comparing Facebook and Twitter will be a dream for you. It breaks down the demographics of the two social media giants. “Among the biggest differences are that Twitter users seem to be more active, but less interested in following brands.” (GigaOM)

Semantically Analyzing Web Pages with Delicious

Delicious is a useful tool despite its current path toward extinction. One way to leverage the tool is to run an API on a Web page’s text to use significant terms as categories. (ReadWriteWeb)

Is Social Ranking Dying?

Is the notion that Google and other search engines are using social networking signals in their ranking algorithms dying already? There are “aggressive” black-hat tactics to leverage social ranking, including fake profiles, fake content and buying social media accounts. Regardless of the buzz, social media is just another tactic to rank your sites, and marketers shouldn’t overthink it. (SEO Book)

Search and Social Should Remain Separate

Social signals have been receiving too much attention lately. Search results in competitive niches haven’t changed in any major way for sites that have embraced social media. Still, the system can be gamed and there are ways to effectively use Twitter and Facebook. Your best option is to focus on improving your content in results pages and forge a social media strategy on its own. (Search Engine Watch)

56% of Mobile Ads Are on Smart Phones

According to inMobi, a mobile ad network, 56 percent of mobile ad impressions in the U.S. are on smart phones. Ad impressions have increased by 25 percent (600 million) over the past 90 days. Android is driving much of this surge, though iPhone OS still accounts for 24.6 percent of impressions. (ReadWriteWeb)

101 Conversion Tips for Your Website

If you’re looking to improve your site’s conversions (and who isn’t?), this list is worth a gander. Among the 101 conversion tips included are to test your call-to-action text, consider adding a “live chat” option during normal business hours, simplify the legalese, and add the option for customers to read and leave reviews and ratings for products. (KISSmetrics)

Converting Spam E-mails into Page Views

While this venture isn’t for everyone, it’s a fun way to pick on and take advantage of spammers. The foundation of this is to “reply to spam emails with some kind of reply catered to what they’re asking of you — the grab being that you also include a link to a page you want them to click through to.” (ZDNet)

Hotmail Enables In-E-mail Surfing

Active Views is Hotmail’s new platform that enables users surf certain websites from within an e-mail message. For the time being, Microsoft has chosen specific companies (like Orbitz and Monster.com for now) to partner for this. Users are enabled to search and manage accounts right from their inboxes. A white list of senders helps this feature avoid security issues. (CNET)

Internal Link Hub

A link hub or link nexus is simply "a concentration of external links to a deep page in your website." The more link hubs you have, the more natural your site will look. Read on to learn how to identify them and use them to your advantage. (Greywolf’s SEO Blog)

3 Content-Based Ads to Watch in 2011

The three ad units to watch in 2011 don’t involve a desktop or a laptop: specialty tablet ads, e-book ads and targeted set-top box ads. (Econsultancy)

Cheating E-mail Tactics Are No Good

Correction e-mails have higher open rates than their regular counterparts, but that doesn’t mean you should abuse them. Among the reasons why cheating this way is wrong are that e-mail is rarely about opens, the benefits are temporary and the potential problem when you have to send a real correction/apology message. (MediaPost)

Smart Phones Have Empowered Consumers, Frightened Retailers

A consumer walking around a retail store can find out if a certain product is cheaper online with a few quick strokes on his smart phone. This has given consumers a leg up, and has eroded the advantage the advantage retailers and marketers used to have. (WSJ.com)

6 New SEO Tools You Should Check Out

Ontolo, SEO Gadget’s Keyword Research Beta, Trunk.ly, Markup.io, Content Optimizer, and Andrew Wright and Ben Huff’s SERPs Analysis Worksheets are six new SEO tools you should give a look. (SEOmoz)

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Get Honors

If you haven’t heard already, Mark Zuckerberg was named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year. The lengthy, in-depth article covers a lot of ground. Zuckerberg’s company, Facebook, was named the best place to work by Glassdor.com. (TIME.com, CNET)

Bing Upgrades Maps, Local, Mobile, Travel, Image Search

At Bing’s search event in San Francisco on Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled a variety of updates. Included were Facebook tie-ins (Like annotations, social annotations), local enhancements (integration of OpenTable an FanSnap into the local search vertical) and improvements to its mobile product for the iPhone (real-time transit predictions, reminders). Read on to see the many, many other improvements Bing unveiled in the realms of entertainment, image search, travel, mobile for Android and Bing Maps. (Search Engine Land)

The Fortune 50 and Mobile

While many of the Fortune 50 have dove into the waters of mobile communications, they are shying away from featuring their mobile sites and tools on their corporate sites. Among the findings presented on this visually appealing chart are that 62 percent of Fortune 50 companies are using mobile, 58 percent have mobile apps, 38 percent have mobile-optimized sites and 43 percent of the Fortune 50 companies with mobile-optimized sites enable mobile transactions. (Flowtown)

Unsubscribes Should Be Taken Personally

Unsubscribe rates are often ignored in favor of more positive metrics. Though unsubscribes account for a "relatively" small percentage of a list, e-mail marketers should be careful to learn from that small number rather than ignore it completely. Run a baseline report, work unsubscribe data into reports and build a culture of discovery. (MediaPost)

Ask.com Focuses on Mobile

Ask.com is making an obvious attempt to resurrect itself with an eye to the mobile world. Its Ask for iPhone app features voice recognition, answer alerts and results based on location and answers from "real people." While the Q-and-A site is on the right track, it’s entering into a crowded field and needs to distinguish itself. (paidContent.org)

International Social Media Cultural Quirks

With Google and Bing using social media as signals for ranking sites, taking into account multilingual social media campaigns into your international search engine marketing efforts. A good place to start is understanding the cultural differences when it comes to how different countries view and use social media. This post offers a rundown of how Brazil, Russia, India and China view social media. (Search Engine Watch)