The Week in Review

How to Mask Affiliate Links

Should you mask your affiliate links? It depends. If you think there’s even a slight chance your website won’t turn into a money-making site, be safe and mask affiliate links from the start. There are free masking plugins to use, along with some premium ones. There’s also subdomain affiliate link masking, along with a hybrid solution. (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

Women Click Facebook Ads More, Younger Adults Like More

According to a new report from SocialCode, women are 11 percent more likely to click on a Facebook ad, but men are 2.2 percent more likely to like a brand via an ad. Also, the like rate peaks with users ages 18-29 and 40-49, while the average click-through rate rises with age. (MarketingProfs)

5 Filters You Should Use in AdWords

Using these five AdWords filters at the keyword level will save time and alert you to what needs attention in your PPC campaigns: 1) “great but expensive”; 2) “good, but not much scope”; 3) “doomed”; 4) “gold”; and 5) “quality score duds.” “The filters in this article are the types of filters used by experienced campaign managers to quickly get to the source of potential problems in your account and make rapid improvements to your performance. ” (Search Engine Watch)

The Benefits of Ready-Made Email Templates

Email templates get rid of the hassle of building emails in order to reach target audiences. They save time, display well across email clients, fit any need and are easy to use. You can always get the help of a professional email designer. (MailerMailer Blog)

9 Facebook Marketing Success Stories to Learn From

Here’s a look at nine companies that have revamped their Facebook presences by implementing innovative Facebook marketing practices. For example, IdeaPaint, a business-to-business company that sells specialty paint that converts walls and other spaces into dry-erase writing surfaces, created a welcome tab with hot spots containing links to their social spots. The company also uses videos and integrates its blog. (Social Media Examiner)

The Value of Email

If you ever need to sell someone on the enduring value of email, look no further than this simple infographic, courtesy of SmarterTools. According to the infographic, there are 2.9 billion email accounts worldwide, making Facebook’s 750 million accounts look paltry. There are also 188 billion email messages sent daily, far outpacing the 3.3 billion Web searches, 1 billion items shared on Google+, 140 million tweets and 60 million status updates on Facebook each day. (ReadWriteWeb)

10 Web Analytics Myths Dispelled

Here’s a list of this pro’s top 10 Web analytics myths, along with practical advice on how to dispel them. Among the myths are that free analytics software is just as good as enterprise analytics, dashboards or reports should have four quadrants and just a handful of data, insights are more important than data, and unique visitors are real people. (Search Engine Watch)

3 Signs That It’s Time to Demand More From Your Affiliate Manager

If your sales are steadily increasing, you need more metrics or you have staff, it’s time to start asking more of your affiliate manager. This post includes advice on how to do this – for instance, when it comes to steadily increasing sales, request a higher commission. (Share Results)

7 Ways to Improve Conversion Rates on Your Squeeze Page

“If you have a squeeze page then you know that as you increase your conversion rate percentage, you increase your number of subscribers – while at the same time you decrease your average cost per new subscriber acquisition.” Here are seven ways to boost your conversion rates on your squeeze page: 1) pre-heading, 2) heading, 3) product image, 4) subscriber data, 5) button text, 6) button style and 7) social proof. (Search Engine People)

3 Ways PPC Can Improve Your Organic Results Through Testing

Organic search can be great for increasing your site’s visibility, finding new customers and giving your company a nice source of revenue. However, it does have its drawbacks. Testing title tags, testing home pages and testing templates are three ways your paid search account can help your organic teams get their hands on the data they need to make good decisions. Don’t forget to use ACE or AdWords Campaign Experiments for your tests. (Search Engine Land)

5 Online Marketing Tools to Use Every Day

This online marketer shares the five Internet marketing tools he actually uses every day: 1) Open Site Explorer, 2) Xenu Link Sleuth, 3) SEO Toolbar from SEO Book, 4) Google Webmaster Tools and 5) Google Analytics. (Search Engine People)

How to Pay Less per Click on Facebook Advertising

Here’s a brief look at how to pay less per click when advertising on Facebook. Since the social networking site uses a marketplace system, bidding when there’s less competition can help advertisers win auctions with lower-priced bids. Also, finding peak seasons can help you avoid paying more for ads if your campaign isn’t urgent. (AllFacebook)

What to Do When Your Conversions Are Falling

When your conversions drop, so do your conversion rates and sales, while your cost per sale rises. This isn’t the time to panic. Instead, examine these areas to find what’s wrong: traffic sources, page load speed, search queries, broken links and targeting changes. (Search Engine Journal)

Off-Site Influences for Link Building

Link building is a hotly contested topic within SEO. A core pillar of link building is off-site influences. This post offers a discussion of the strategies that surround link building as opposed to the tactics. “The space is flooded with these tactics already, yet little attention is paid to the strategies that guide successful link building campaigns.” Among the main points is the necessity of a data-driven keyword strategy and aiming at the right destination URLs. (Search Engine Watch)

10 Tips for Building Display Ads for Direct-Response Campaigns

Google has some pointers for designing display ads that have direct-response objectives – 10 of them, in fact. Included are including a call-to-action and key message in every frame; keeping your brand/product logo in front of users in all frames; including a clear, compelling message spotlighting the benefit of your product/service; and creating your ad in every standard size/format to ensure that it reaches all of the highest-performing corners of the Google Display Network. (Inside AdWords)

How Long Is a Shortened Link’s Half Life?

How long is a link “alive” before people stop caring? Bitly decided to answer this question by examining the half life of links – “the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak.” The company found that the mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours. This number was 3.2 hours on Facebook and 3.4 hours via “direct” sources (e.g., email or IM). YouTube exhibited a half life of 7.4 hours. (bitly blog)

Why Are Your Emails Bouncing?

A bounce is an email that didn’t reach the subscriber’s inbox and was sent back to the sender. If your bounce rate is increasing, it’s probably because of bad email addresses. If you get a bounce rate of about 20 percent or higher, you might want to reconfirm your list. (MailerMailer Blog)

How to Increase CTR and SEO Quality Signals With Google Authorship

Google has figured out a way to enable you to increase click-through rate and add user quality signals to nearly everything you write on the Internet. All it takes is adding rel=”author” with a link to your Google profile. This takes seven simple steps: 1) create a Google profile (or a Google+ profile); 2) add a link to your website in your Google profile links; 3) upload a clear photo of your face; 4) copy your profile link and number; 5) add a hyperlink to your bio and articles on your site; 6) verify you did it right; and 7) submit your Authorship to Google. (The Search Agents)

Google Acquires Zagat: It’s More Than Local

Google’s acquisition of Zagat signals how serious it is about local ratings, search and reviews. The move is almost certainly a name and data buy and leaves the door open for acquisitions of more specific systems. “The beauty of the acquisition is that it gives Google, in one fell swoop, the ability to show Zagat ratings instead of Yelp data in search results.” Google might also be making a huge play for the $19 billion annual travel business. (The Next Web)

The History of Facebook Advertising

Facebook is becoming a big draw for advertisers, but how did the giant social network get to where it is today? This infographic details the history of Facebook advertising, from its inception in February 2004, to its 2006 partnership with J.P. Morgan Chase, to its introduction of Facebook Ads in 2007 – and beyond. (Mashable)

8 Steps to Good Mobile Email Design

The growing reliance upon mobile devices makes mobile email design all the more important. Here are eight steps for designing for mobile email. Among them are to make the most of pre-header text, choose the right email dimensions and design for fat fingers. (MediaPost)

Porn Sites Rejoice: .xxx Domain Opens up

Thanks to ICM, the .xxx top-level domain is now open to porn and non-porn sites alike. ICM is touting this as a win for consumers, adult-entertainment industry and those who don’t want to visit these sites. After a 50-day “sunrise” period, a “land rush” will start on Nov. 8. There are concerns about trademark infringement. (CNET)

Facebook Ad Timing May Boost ROI 116%

According to TBG Digital, deploying Facebook ads at the right time could boost ROI by 116 percent. The study also found that male consumers are 42 percent more likely to complete an online transaction via Facebook during evening hours than women are. (AllFacebook)

Facebook’s First-Half Revenue: $1.6 Billion

Facebook notched $1.6 billion in revenue in the first half of 2011, with net income totaling nearly $500 million. This highlights the site’s appeal to advertisers and builds anticipation for its supposed IPO in 2012. (Reuters)

5 Keys for Conversion Rate Optimization

Improving conversion rates from current traffic is one of the quickest ways to improve ROI from search campaigns. The top five ways to improve conversion rates for organic and paid landing pages are relevancy, proposition, trust, understanding user intent and removing distractions. (Search Engine Watch)