The Week in Review

Using Twitter to Boost Your Google Rankings

Social signals are now affecting search rankings, which means using Twitter to boost your rankings is pretty important. The first step is to get an active (keyword) Twitter account. Then look into using Twitter tools to help with promotion (Twtpoll or Paywithatweet, for example). After that, connect, run competitions, create quality content, use targeted keywords and make sure your tweets are retweetable. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Targets Mobile, Acquires Rel8tion

Bret Taylor, Facebook’s CTO, claims that the company’s top priority in 2011 is mobile – specifically, making Facebook Connect more accessible for mobile apps, reducing the burden of developing for different platforms and location. The social networking giant also acquired Rela8tion yesterday, a little-known mobile advertising company. (Business Insider, paidContent.org)

Optimizing Paid Search for Tablet Devices

Tablets are growing in popularity, which opens up a door of opportunity for search advertisers to drive revenue. ROI and conversion rates are typically higher on tablet devices than on PCs. Among the things to keep in mind when creating a tablet-specific campaign are: tablet-specific keywords, ad creative and making sure landing pages aren’t heavy on Flash. (The Search Agents)

Social Validation

Having good content on your site isn’t good enough anymore. Now your good content needs to be socialized, which means social validation is a necessity. What is social validation? It happens when search engine see real people mentioning your URL and interacting with it. (WebProNews)

Facebook Unveils User-Generated Ad Option

Facebook has launched “Sponsored Stories” ads, which enable marketers to use messages from their “likes” community for paid promotions on the social networking site. “The ads contain word-for-word Facebook user posts, while appearing in the right-hand column with other paid promotions on the website.” (ClickZ)

Facebook Ad Rates Rose in December

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook’s cost-per-click ad rates rose in the U.S. and Canada through the last month of 2010, with an upper bound of $1.76 in the U.S. and $1.34 in Canada. However, Facebook’s traffic in North America has remained stagnant at around 140 million for a few months now, signaling that “as this market matures, the site may begin to see diminishing returns on its efforts to bring uninitiated users to the site.” (Inside Facebook)

Firefox and Chrome Add ‘Do Not Track’ Tools

In response to a suggestion from the FTC late in 2010 to implement a “Do Not Track” option on browsers, Mozilla and Google each announced their respective privacy features yesterday. The companies approach the problem a bit differently – Firefox “will allow users to set a preference that will broadcast their desire to opt out of ad-based tracking,” while Google’s approach tries to address “the problem that you face when and if you ever clear your browser’s cookies – that you lose all your customized settings, including any site you’ve opted out of. The new extension for Chrome will keep that opt-out permanently.” (ReadWriteWeb, WSJ.com)

Display Ad Size Matters

Of the five most common display creative sizes (120×600, 160×600, 300×250, 468×60 and 728×90), the 300×250 got the highest CPM ($2.52) in 2010, while the 728×90 got the most traffic (36 percent). (Efficient Frontier)

Designing SEO-Friendly URL Structures

Not creating a hierarchical flow to your site, using less than optimal keyword usage in page names and using ill-advised variables in URL strings are big mistakes. To make sure you have an SEO-friendly URL structure, start with your domain, then move on to the information architecture/folder structure. Lastly, name those pages. (Search Engine Watch)

4 Ways to Improve your Twitter Strategy

If you’re looking to improve your tweeting tactics, remember these four things: 1) tweet quality trumps tweet quantity; 2) the first words are important; 3) quality tweets live for four days; and 4) the optimal space between tweets is either 31-60 minutes or 2-3 hours. (WebProNews)

Display Ads Are Cool Again

Since AT&T unveiled the first display ad in 1994, a lot has changed for the Web – APIs, YouTube, Twitter, etc. However, display ads remained mostly unchanged – until recently. The real-time Web, the dynamic ad experience and new means for measurement are enabling “brands to run ads that reflect the best of today’s web and the brand’s content investments.” (VentureBeat)

Google Has Offers

Those rumors about Google having a Groupon competitor in the works are true. Google Offers was recently unearthed thanks to a confidential fact sheet about the group-buying service. (Mashable)

Is Google Threatening Demand Media?

Google has received a healthy dose of criticism in recent months over its “increasingly useless search results,” thanks to content farms populating search results pages. In a blog post, the search giant said it will come down hard on these content farms, which seems to be a threatening gesture to Demand Media, a company that is planning on unveiling its IPO in the near future. “At the very least, Google’s saber-rattling on the content-farm issue could make investors a little more nervous about Demand’s stock offering — and put more pressure on the company to boost the quality of some of its content so that it doesn’t get caught in Google’s spam filters.” (GigaOM)

The Ultimate Lead-Generation Technique

“What is the most effective way of generating leads?” The answer is the attention span of the user. SEO, online banner display ads, co-registration and dedicated e-mail are all effective to different degrees, but which is supreme? (MediaPost)

A Day in the Life of a Paid-Search Marketer

What do full-time paid-search marketers do every day? Here’s a breakdown of what a full-timer’s schedule looks like, from 9 a.m. to 6:08 p.m. Testing, optimizing, attending meetings and billing are all involved. (Search Engine Land)

3 Secrets to Scalable Enterprise SEO Success
SEO initiatives that scale will be key in 2011. The three areas to focus on are: optimizing your CMS, speeding up your CDS and being a social climber. (Search Engine Watch)

The Cracks Behind Group Buying
Group buying is hot again thanks to Amazon’s partnership with LivingSocial, which went wild yesterday. This doesn’t change the fact that there are serious flaws in these ventures for local businesses: The "fact that some businesses are apparently starting to mail their existing customers promoting deals that are supposedly designed to facilitate new customer acquisition says a lot about where the group buying market is headed." (Econsultancy)

Mobile E-mail Surges Forth
In with the new, out with the old. According to a new report from comScore, Web-based e-mail is seeing declines in unique visitors, minutes and pages viewed, while mobile e-mail is surging. (comScore)

Online Marketers: Don’t Be Impersonal
A survey from Alterian shows that 72.2 percent of marketers and ad agencies are creating a customized customer experience via e-mail, but direct mail, website and social media tactics aren’t being as customized. For e-mail marketing, 25.7 percent of respondents said they use basic personalization in their blasts, while 18.4 percent simply blast on a mass basis. (eMarketer)

Facebook Pages Before Ads
Facebook pages should be the focus for campaigns, not Facebook ads. If you eventually decide to run ads on the social networking site, be wary of typos, grammar mistakes, etc. "If a company is going to be on Facebook, they have to do it well. If they’re not going to take the time to set something up correctly and create engagement, I’d recommend putting effort and focus into a traditional website instead." (O’Reilly Radar)

Top 7 Reasons Search Marketers Should Use Search Retargeting

You’ve probably heard about retargeting, but why should you use it? Here are seven reasons: 1) reach more searchers; 2) reach searchers more often; 3) reach searchers more effectively; 4) target expensive upper funnel, broad search terms; 5) target competitive terms; 6) generate more search traffic; and 7) manage more budget. (Simpli.fi)

5 Landing Page Mistakes that Squash Conversion Rates

Landing pages are where you’re looking for action, and there are lots of ways to screw it up. Five of the most common mistakes are: 1) blowing the headline, 2) using your regular site design, 3) asking for more than one thing, 4) ignoring basic aesthetics and 5) being lazy. (Copyblogger)

Virtual GPS Marketing

Wanna take a photo beside Brooklyn Decker? Just pick up your iPhone, download an app from GoldRun and head to your nearest Barnes & Noble. If you think this is too good to be true, it is – kind of. There’s a new form of marketing emerging that leverages GPS technology and merges it with marketing tactics. (NYTimes.com)

Starbucks Accepting Mobile Payments in All U.S. Stores

Starbucks is rolling out mobile payments in all of its U.S. stores. This likely signals big things for mobile payments. It could also spell bad news for PayPal, credit cards and Foursquare. (WebProNews, BusinessInsider)

LivingSocial + Amazon = Success

By now, you’ve probably seen the too-good-to-be-true offer from Amazon via LivingSocial for a $20 gift card for just $10. This reminds us that Groupon isn’t the only player in this group-deals space. (GigaOM, VentureBeat)