The Week in Review

The 4 A’s of Social Marketing Success

Planning, implementing and reviewing social marketing is as simple as four steps: aims, audience, approach and analyze. These suggestions will help you frame your objectives when you set out for this realm of marketing. (Search Engine Land)

SEO Can’t Be an Afterthought

When you build a new site or rebuild an existing one, SEO should be at the forefront of your concerns, not just an afterthought, as is usually the case. Some of the benefits of considering SEO at the outset are the chance to select the right CMS, plan a proper site structure and set your site up to help build links. (Econsultancy)

BoostCTR, the Demand Media of Search Engine Marketing, Raises $1.6 Million

BoostCTR, a “text-ad optimization tool designed to help advertisers boost their click-through and conversion rates by crowdsourcing ad content to a stable of expert copywriters,” just closed a $1.64 million round of seed funding. (TechCrunch)

Google Set to Test Mobile-Payment System

Google has plans to test a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months. This would enable shoppers to use their mobile phones to make purchases, thanks to special cash-register systems equipped with near-field-communication technology. (Bloomberg)

Google’s Display Ads in Gmail: What’s the Effect on CTRs?

Since Jan 21, Google has been testing display ad units in opened Gmail messages. For e-mail marketers, the question is: “If the display ads become a mainstay in messages, will they negatively affect click-through rates?” One expert says while there might be a short-term effect, in the long run these ads won’t affect a message’s performance. Also, Gmail users are a relatively small percentage of most marketers’ e-mail lists. These ads also open up opportunities for better remarketing campaigns within Gmail. (ClickZ)

The CMO’s Guide to the Social Landscape

This streamlined, colorful, visually appealing PDF offers a grid breaking down Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Tumblr based on: customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site and SEO. For example, while Facebook is good for customer communication and brand exposure, it’s not that great for SEO. (CMO.com)

Long-Tail Websites, Boost Ad Efficiency

A study from CONTEXTWEB found that ads placed on long-tail websites (defined as sites with an overall reach smaller than 1.5 percent of the Internet population) had a significant lift in click-through rates compared with ads on larger Web properties. Overall, long-tail sites lifted click rates by 24 percent. (eMarketer)

How Affiliates Can Dominate Big Niches with SEO

Traffic from search engines can be a bit difficult to get for affiliate websites. That means affiliates in big industries have to find another approach to getting traffic to their sites. Among the steps involved is setting up a quality blog with a simple design, focusing on “quick wins” and building a healthy stable of links. (Econsultancy)

Smart Mobile Search Marketing

With marketing spend on mobile display ads and search set to exceed $1 billion this year, it’s time to ask: What makes for smart mobile marketing? An expert weighs in with tips that are founded on action, context, location and mood. (The Search Agents)

10 Steps for Setting up Initial Bids

Doing a good job of setting up initial bids is important for brand-new campaigns. For those who either can’t or won’t use Google’s Conversion Optimizer, this post offers a 10-step program for setting up initial bids. Among them are evaluating risk tolerance, estimating the likely success rate, getting granular and doing damage control. (Search Engine Land)

SEO + Good Usability

Conversion-oriented SEO is better than plain SEO. So once you do all that link building, etc., and get a good rank in SERPs, it’s time to think about users clicking on your link. “How are they going to act being on your site? Are they going just to click and leave? Are you able to hold them there? Are they really going to convert? When we think about conversion, lots of things can come to our minds: link building, PPC, content, colors, etc. But, before all of these stuff, the first thing you need to figure out is what your visitors want.” Here’s a rundown of what this process looks like, along with some helpful tools. (SEOmoz)

Google Mobile CPC is 41% Lower Than Desktop CPC

Some testing led the to the finding that Google mobile CPCs are a median 41 percent lower than desktop CPCs. Why is this the case? A few potential factors are lower competition, higher quality scores and Google possibly applying a form of smart pricing to mobile, given its lower online conversion potential. (The Rimm-Kaufman Group)

The New Age of Article Marketing

Because it was so easy and pure, article marketing was leaned on heavily by this writer in his past SEO strategies. While Google’s “Farmer” update didn’t kill that process, it certainly changed it. So what does this all mean for SEOs? For one thing, article marketing is no longer easy. Now you’ll have to target the top content sites, re-emphasize social media and start e-mailing. (Search Engine Land)

The Art of E-mail Opt-outs

Groupon has done a neat, fun thing with their unsubscribe process. While it’s worth noting and learning from, it still doesn’t make up for bombarding recipients with too many irrelevant messages. Make sure you know whether you’re sending e-mails to often, assess your purchase cycle, apply the principles of marketing to your e-mail campaign and recognize potential “jumpers” before they leave you. (Econsultancy)

Doorway Pages Ranking in Google?

Google’s recent “Panda” update seems to have one big loophole: doorway pages. While low-content sites have mostly been punished, doorway pages appear to have leaked through to prominent positions in SERPs. A basic tip? If you see Google ranking an information-less page like that on a site you own, that might be a green light to see how far you can run with it. Give GoogleBot the "quality content" it seeks. Opportunity abound!” (SEO Book.com)

Mobile Searches, Paid Ads Are Surging; CTR and ROI Lag Behind

Efficient Frontier shows us that while mobile searches and mobile paid ads are growing rapidly, CTR and ROI are trailing behind. " Mobile searches have a click-through-rate 30% lower than desktop, the cost-per-click is 13% higher, which doesn’t really make it a tempting platform to put your ads on just now. Also mobile sees a lot less transactions completed which makes that the ROI is just 10% of desktop ROI." Nevertheless, you should still be spending on mobile. (State of Search)

Global SEO

Ranking in search results in different countries demands a different SEO strategy for each country you’re aiming for. The four main factors to consider regarding ranking in country-specific versions of Google are: top-level domains, IP addresses, onsite content and backlinks. When building sites for specific countries, consider separate sites on separate domains, subdomains for each target market and subdirectories for each target market. (Search Engine Watch)

7 Lessons from the Top 50 Brands in Social Media

Don’t just look at the top 50 brands in social media — learn something from them. Among the seven takeaways are: "A few short bursts of social media activity won’t necessarily sustain the conversation"; "Being ‘liked’ by people on Facebook doesn’t equal engagement"; and "Facebook isn’t everything." (Econsultancy)

Build Links by Creating Encyclopedic Content

"The biggest mistake many people make when working on content for a website is assuming that all of the content should be monetized. Yes, you should strive to make a project profitable, but not at the expense of link building." Conversion-centric and social media-centric content is fine and dandy, but push past that into the reference-centric stuff. (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

Online Marketing: The New Word of Mouth

Using tax-prep services as an example, this post examines the various tools companies "can deploy to be part of the conversation when the client is ready to buy" — affiliate marketing, social marketing, PPC, SEO, online reputation management and e-mail CRM. "Every service vertical has a pivotal month or critical time window to drive new clients and increase revenues. Online performance marketing tools enable service providers to cost-effectively engage existing and potential clients on a continuous basis." (ClickZ)

Never Duplicate Your Competitor’s SEO Strategies

Arming yourself with information via competitive research before SEO, PPC, social media and link-building campaigns is essential, but going too far down that path can lead to trouble. Ranking for the same keywords your competitors are ranking for can’t be your sole campaign tactic. "If your online marketing campaign is simply a reaction, you’ll never be ahead of them. You’ll always be playing catch-up." (Search Engine Guide)

Search Users Overlook Search Ads

Research from User Centric finds that most search users overlook search ads almost completely. Organic search results were viewed 100 percent of the time, with users spending an average of 14.7 second looking at organic results on Google, and 10.7 second looking at organic results on Bing. "However, only 28% of participants looked at right-side ads on Google, and just 21% did the same on Bing—spending around 1 second viewing all ads combined on each search engine. To put this in perspective, searchers who viewed the left-hand site navigation spent more time doing so than they did viewing ads on both search engines." (eMarketer)

Brand > ROI

Marketers need to be invested in more than ROI and should be looking to enrich their overall brand. This post offers an explanation of why marketers should care more about their brand than ROI (though they’re related), as well as three ways to build your brand online: leverage content networks, leverage social media and leverage online videos. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Tests the Replacement of Keyword Ad Targeting with Broad Category Targeting

Facebook is tinkering with a key aspect of its self-serve performance-ad tool. The tweak would replace the specific "like" keyword targeting with broad category targeting. "If implemented, this change would make somewhat accurate targeting more accessible to novice advertisers, but severely limit A/B testing and eliminate many advanced strategies used by expert advertisers to attain high click-through rates." (Inside Facebook)

The World’s Shortest Guide to SEO

Here’s everything you need to know about SEO in 10 words — along with a brief explanation. (LifeDev)