The Week in Review

The Value of Significance in Ad Testing

Ad testing is critical for continuous improvements of AdWords campaigns. A/B testing is a necessity, with the tester going with the ad that performs better. But when testing to improve click-through rates, which change over time, waiting for a significant difference on a test might not lead to the best results in the long run. (Econsultancy)

7 Social Media Tricks to Avoid Using

Auto-follow; auto-DM; retweeting every tweet praising you, your product or activity; and using Facebook as your primary Web presence are all fine and dandy social media tricks, but indulging in these forbidden fruits won’t do you any favors. (Search Engine People)

Does Google Consider SEO to Be Spam?

Matt Cutts answers that question in this brief video. The brief answer is no, Google does not consider SEO to be spam. “There are many many, many valid ways people can make the world better with SEO.” (Search Engine Journal)

Optimal Link Placement in Tweets: A Quarter of the Way Through

According to a study of 200,000 random bit.ly-link-containing tweets, courtesy of Dan Zarrella of HubSpot, the best area for clicks is about 25 percent of the way through a tweet. Take a look at his Twitter CTR heat map for more insights. (Dan Zarella)

How to Make Call-to-Action Web Banner Ads

Color selection, load time, animation, a clear message and avoiding plainness are some of the tactics to keep in mind when creating a call-to-action banner ad. “If your banner is not attractive enough, people will simply ignore the banner so you need to work hard to make your banner more click-able and likeable.” (Lava360)

Google’s PPC Algorithm Changes

Last week, Google introduced a significant change to its PPC algorithm — maybe the most significant in some time. "Google has changed the proportion of quality score weighting to make landing page relevancy more important, a moving away slightly from of click through rate (CTR) as the primary metric for an ad’s success." Here are three PPC experts sharing their views on how this will affects brands and advertisers. (Econsultancy)

The Importance of the Long Tail

According to Google, 16 percent of more than a billion searches conducted each day have never been seen before. Site owners should be prepared to target as many of these longer-tail phrases as possible. This entails great content, along with category and product pages. (Datadial)

The Modern SEO’s Tool Kit

Will Critchlow, founder and chief of Distilled, shares some real problems he’s had at his company and the tools used to resolve them. The tools used include Balsamiq, SmartSheet and Screaming Frog. (State of Search)

An Interview With a Link-Building Expert

This interview with link-building expert Melanie Nathan covers topics like e-commerce, the client side of SEO, tools used for new clients (e.g., SEOProfiler Competitive Backlink Intelligence, Yahoo Site Explorer) and key things to look for when identifying link opportunities. She also had this to say about Google: "I almost feel sorry for Google in that no matter what they try to use as a measure of quality, there will always be ways to game it. I think this is precisely why they’re trying to move away from organic SERPs by diversifying them so much. It’s an imperfect system and I seriously don’t envy the position they’ve put themselves in." (SEO Book.com)

Tagging for Better Google Analytics Data

Tagging is one of the ways to make your data more accurate. Here’s a look at some major tagging issues, along with tips for creating a tagging plan (for email marketing, affiliate marketing, partnerships, display marketing and social media). (Search Engine Land)

4 Tips for Creating Compelling Offers on Twitter

Twitter is a great social media channel for lead generation. Here’s a look at four things that make a terrific offer on Twitter: 1) the offer has to be nice, 2) the offer has to be novel, 3) the offer has to be time sensitive and 4) make the offer naughty. (HubSpot)

The Most Valuable Digital Consumers

Nielsen and NM Incite pieced together this nifty infographic about digital consumer behaviors and consumption patterns, broken down into social, local and mobile. Among the findings are that 45 percent of consumers local-deal visitors are very likely to recommend the daily-deal site and smartphone users spend two-thirds of their mobile phone time on apps. (Nielsen)

The Holidays: Joy, Laughter and Analytics

Here’s a look at how to avoid some of the stress that comes with holiday search campaigns. “By simply shifting your focus to be more analytics-heavy and adjusting the way you look at your data, you can lessen your stress, better predict trends and results, and make the entire holiday season more successful.” (Search Engine Land)

89% of Agencies Would Use Facebook in Their Campaigns

According to a survey from Strata, 89 percent of advertising agencies said they would use Facebook in their campaigns in the third quarter, a 10 percent gain from the previous quarter. Also, 85 percent said they’re more focused on digital this year than they were in 2010. (AllFacebook)

SEO’s 3 Stages of Keyword Success

There are three stages of keyword success to watch for: the early stage, the middle stage and the late stage. Also, keep in mind the three types of keywords: branded; non-branded, long-tail; and non-branded, short-tail. (Small Business SEM)

Should You Change Your URLs for SEO?

All SEOs get fixated on a particular tactic – perfectly optimized URLs, for example. All changes are risky, but there are five specific scenarios to carefully consider before changing your URLs: 1) dynamic URLs, 2) unstructured URLs, 3) long URLs, 4) keyword stuffing and 5) keyword cannibalization. (SEOmoz)

Stop Using Obvious Anchor Text

Anchor text that’s too obvious ignores the way real people behave when sharing content. “Under a paradigm where links are predominantly given by real people rather than incentivised web masters, the distribution of anchor text that is used is significantly different from that which we would choose our selves.” This is important if you believe search engines are basing their relevance on modern behavioral norms. (Quumf)

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile and Tablet Devices

Making your site available in and properly optimized for the mobile world can be done with the help of Google AdWords, classic SEO tactics, simplicity and clear font. To make your site mobile-friendly, know the basics, consider your design options and be sure to test. When optimizing your site for tablets, be sure to limit duplicate content by changing CSS, don’t overwhelm visitors with scrolling and remember the five viewing angles, among other things. (Search Engine Watch)

Google Unveils Search Ads for Mobile Apps

Google unveiled a host of new mobile ad formats today, including one designed for the search experience. “Another ad unit allows businesses to use mobile search ads to direct someone right to a destination within a mobile app already installed on their phone.” (TechCrunch)

Google Introduces Dynamic Search Ads

Google is opening up a wider beta test of Dynamic Search Ads, a new type of AdWords ad for bigger advertisers that gets rid of the need for keywords. This ad automatically generates ad copy by looking at the content on the advertiser’s website. (Search Engine Land, RKGBlog)

How Google’s Human Search-Quality Raters Assign a URL Rating

Google’s URL Raters are real people who look for certain qualities and attributes when they visit your page. Thanks to a leaked training manual for new raters, we have some insights into what they look for. These include location, query interpretation and timeliness. (Search Engine Watch)

Why Online Display Advertising Is Simpler Than Ever

Marketers need to know that display advertising today is a lot simpler than some would have them believe. Here are five reasons why: 1) scale, 2) effectiveness, 3) flexibility, 4) convenience and 5) transparency. (Search Engine Land)

8 Tips to Improve Google Quality Scores

Quality Score is Google’s "measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text, to a users search query, your landing page, how fast your website loads, what keywords are on your landing page and a variety of other factors." Among the eight tips for improving your Quality Score are to make ad groups tightly themed, making landing pages for specific ad groups and always have two ads running. (Search Engine Journal)

The New SEO: ‘Siri Engine Optimization’

With Apple’s unveiling of its updated iOS 5 mobile operating system came Siri. The introduction of Siri means it’s now worth pondering how people are using the new voice-based functionality and consider a new form of "SEO" — Siri engine optimization. Here’s a look at a few surefire strategies to think about. (ClickZ)

7 Lessons Learned From Running an SEO Agency

Here are seven lessons this co-founder of KISSmetrics shares from his days running an SEO agency: 1) run your agency like a businessman, 2) it’s harder to get clients than to keep them, 3) never stop building your brand, 4) keep your overhead low, 5) don’t get too greedy, 6) have ironclad contracts that automatically renew, and 7) pick a niche and dominate it. (SEOmoz)