The Week in Review

Mobilizing Your E-mail Program

Businesses and consumers are going mobile at a rapid pace. So, what does this mean for e-mail design? According to one expert, there are three main solutions: text-only versions, HTML light versions or "mobilized" e-mail. The last option is the best. Find out how to get there. (MediaPost)

PPC vs./and SEO

" You should be doing SEO. You probably should be doing PPC. They work well together." There’s a shift that’s making paid search your organic competitor. (Search Engine Watch)

70% of Small Businesses Use Facebook to Reach Consumers

According to new research from MerchantCircle, 70 percent of small businesses now use Facebook to reach consumers. "Up from 50% a year ago — and topping the 66% of small businesses that currently use Google search advertising — Facebook now ranks as the most popular marketing tool among local businesses." (MediaPost)

51 Link-Building Tips

Here’s a link-building "opus" that covers "pretty much every way you can go about building links." Among the 51 tips are: producing video content, making a calculator or benchmarking tools, giving out awards, and getting links from existing visitors. (Econsultancy)

The Next Generation of Ranking Signals

Another big shift in the key metrics search engines use to order their search results is afoot. This time, it will involve brand signals, entity associations, and human quality rates and (trusted) user behavior. Search engines will be working hard to prove that they can’t be gamed so easily by the likes of JC Penney and content farms. (SEOmoz)

Outsourcing SEO for $5

Time is money, which is why searching the Internet for resources to outsource work to for SEO or other purposes is so important. Fiverr is one such resource to consider. While it’s similar to oDesk, " there’s no way I’m ever getting billed a mere $5 for any job on oDesk. I always seem to end up overcharged and with a half working product from oDesk." Whether you’re looking to promote your site on social bookmarking services or want someone to record and post a video review of your product, Fiverr has someone for you. (Search Engine Watch)

What Facebook’s New Pages Mean for Marketers

If you’re a marketer looking to use the new Facebook pages to grow your presence, this rundown is worth a read. It goes over what’s new, possible problems and a look at the navigation changes. (Econsultancy)

Getting SEO Value from Your Affiliate Links

There are advantages and risks to optimizing your affiliate program to get more SEO value. Among the topics are using a dedicated landing page for big affiliates, making sure affiliates link to the right page and help your affiliates make their content more valuable. (SEOmoz)

Black Hat SEO Tactics Are Bad

Just in case you needed a reminder that black hat stuff is bad, a recent article from the New York Times offers a glimpse into a naughty SEO strategy that JC Penney was caught using. It resulted in plunging rankings for formerly strong queries. The lesson for smaller businesses: "If you hire the wrong SEO consultant or otherwise engage in optimization tactics that Google frowns upon, your rankings could go in the toilet, potentially doing permanent damage to your online business." (ReadWriteWeb)

Are Google’s Personalized Search Results Trustworthy?

Among the conclusions of a controversial study of Google’s personalized search results are: "Despite personalized results, for most people search quality has been declining, results are less personal, reflecting more of a standardized Google-centric view than ever before, and that personalized search serves the interests of advertisers more than searchers — even when looking at organic results and excluding paid AdWords listings on a search result page." The researchers express the need for more transparency, "otherwise the knowledge and power differentials between those on the inside of search engines and those who are mere users of a powerful but opaque machine are bound to grow." (Search Engine Land)

Valentine’s Day and Display Ads

Do display publishers see traffic variations around Valentine’s Day, and are advertiser creatives on these sites able to capture people’s attention? According to data from Efficient Frontier, which tracked a social networking site and two dating sites, there was a definite spike in traffic on Feb. 13, 2010, and it held into Valentine’s Day. CTRs were also higher for ads appearing on these sites around V-Day. (Efficient Frontier)

15 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think About SEO

This is the first set of questions that a business audience should be asking themselves about SEO. Among them are: What is the most important element of a successful SEO campaign? How do you determine which keywords should be optimized for which pages? What are the top three on-page factors that should be optimized? (Search Engine Guide)

3 Issues to Consider Before Focusing on More Traffic

Everyone seems to need more traffic, since that is expected to lead to more sales, bigger revenue, etc. However, this logic is broken. The three issues to consider before honing in on more traffic are: your next customer probably isn’t the same as your current customers; real upside comes from a new approach, not more traffic; and you may be missing (or ticking off) your biggest marketing asset. (Search Engine Land)

10 Things Facebook Page Admins Should Do Post-Redesign

Facebook recently gave their pages a big facelift. That means there are a lot of things page admins should take care of, including setting the page’s category and subcategory, checking your e-mail notification settings for fan comments, and checking out your page’s tabs. (The Social Path)

How to Optimize Your Website for Local Search

Local SEO isn’t an easy nut to crack. While the same rules apply, the tactics are a bit different in certain areas. Start with Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local, then verify your business, select your categories, get listed in local directories (e.g., Yelp and Merchant Circle), and ask for customer reviews. (Entrepreneur.com)

Advertiser Spending on Real-Time Bidding to Double in 2011

Advertisers spent $350 million on real-time bidded inventory in the U.S. in 2010, but that number is set to surge to $823 million in 2011, according to Forrester Research. This would account for 8 percent of spending on online display advertising. There are hurdles, of course, including quality and the complexity of the ecosystem. (ClickZ)

Apple iAds Have Hit a Rough Spot

“Fill rates” (the percentage of ad inventory that is actually filled with an ad) for iAds have “dropped dramatically after the New Year and have yet to recover.” It could be seasonal, but “The general consensus among the advertising community is that it is a product they don’t want.” (TechCrunch)

The Landscape for Low Airfares Gets More Competitive

Search engines, tech companies and airlines themselves are shaking up the landscape of online air travel. A key area of conflict is what customers want (the best fare) and what airlines want (to be shopped based on value). Google’s seemingly innocuous plans to use its purchase of ITA Software simply to lead searchers to airlines’ websites, along with what companies like Hipmunk are doing, are potential disruptors in this arena. (NYTimes.com)

Intentional Targeting: Search vs. Facebook

“In reality, Facebook marketing offers a very different value proposition from search marketing, and results-driven marketers can still get a much better return our of search than they can out of social.” Read on to find out why Facebook is the prodigal channel, how search and intentional targeting are related, and about social intent vs. search intent, among other topics. (Search Engine Watch)

With Great Recognition Comes Great Responsibility

This writer just received a very lofty e-mail marketing award. He realizes that “this recognition confers responsibility to reach out to all email marketers and industry participants and urge them to use their collective energy, skills and interests to raise the profile and perception of email marketing.” (MediaPost)

Is Syndication Killing Your Rankings?

You have a site with great content and push it out onto sites that are willing to pay you to syndicate that rich content. The problem? Those syndication sites are ranking above yours. Among the eight steps to take to resolve this issue are: making sure your syndication partner is linking to your original article, delaying the syndication of your content and setting limits on your content. (Search Engine Watch)

E-mail Marketing and QR Codes

QR codes are cool and all, but are they useful to e-mail marketers? Of course. Five ways to use them together are: 1) integrating the QR code into your e-mail content; 2) adding the QR code into your e-mail and forum signatures; 3) rewarding your best customers with a special QR code; 4) linking the QR code back to exclusive informational content; and 5) unfolding a promotional story over time with a QR code-enabled drip campaign. (MediaPost)

Facebook Upgrades its Ad System

Facebook recently unveiled some significant upgrades to its self-serve advertising system. The most noticeable "tweak" is the "Sponsored Stories" ad type. Page administrators are also able to select which tab they want visitors to land on when they click on their ad. "The most incredible aspect of these upgrades, outside of the fact that advertisers get to split test their ads more effectively, is that Facebook is charging advertisers to recirculate users within its own site." (All Facebook)

Bing Gains More Ground in January

According to Experian Hitwise, Bing’s market share grew 21 percent month-over-month in January, as Microsoft’s search engine finished the month with 12.81 percent of the U.S. market. It also boasts a "success rate" (the percent of searches executed that resulted in a visit to a website) than Google — 81.54 percent vs. 65.58 percent. However, no one should jump to conclusions about what this might mean about the accuracy of either search engine’s results. (Experian Hitwise, WebProNews)

Top 5 Free SEO iPad Apps

If you’re an SEO and own an iPad, you should consider these five free SEO apps: Quick SEO Site Review App, Google Analytics for iPad, RavenTools, WordPress for iPad, and VNC. (Search Engine Watch)