The Week in Review

HP TouchPad Still a Factor for Mobile Advertising?

Though HP’s TouchPad was a victim of the company’s announcement that it would close the doors on its webOS device business, the tablet might still have some butts to kick — namely Android’s. According to Jumptap, a mobile ad agency, in about 10 days, the TouchPad has nearly caught up to Android in terms of ad impressions (or traffic) on its network. "Whatever is behind these numbers it does make one believe that producing an ad-subsidized tablet (think Amazon) might be a viable business model." (ZDNet, CNET)

Google+ Wins When Spammers Win

Google has found itself in shaky territory, thanks to Google+. With marketers looking to abuse the system acting faster than Google is when it comes to finding loopholes, it brings up an interesting question: "Is it actually in Google’s best interests to stop abuse of the system, or should they simply monitor what’s happening and address it later?" Crawlable comments, buying Google +1s and standard comment spamming are three areas that are ripe for spamming — areas that Google might want to leave open for a while. (Search Engine Watch)

Secrets of PPC Success

This is the first in series of interviews of AdWords advertisers who exhibited particularly strong scores in WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader. This pro shares that his top three key performance metrics in AdWords are Quality Score, conversion rate and click-through rate. He also discusses his AdWords management strategy, including specific techniques. "My advice is always be relevant, create relevant campaigns and give the user the answer to his query as precisely as you can." (WordStream)

Older Users Click More Facebook Ads Than Younger Users Do

A study from Social Code reveals that Facebook users over the age of 50 are 28.2 percent more likely to click an ad than users 18-29 years old. Also, women ages 50+ are 31.2 percent more likely to click ads than young adults. Social Code’s CEO points out that "while older users are adopting Facebook at a high rate, they are also the newest subset to join the social network, meaning they may not have high friend numbers, so ads are less likely to have social context." (AllFacebook)

Google to Explore Re-Ranking Search Results Using +1 Data

Though it’s hardly surprising, a Google spokesman has confirmed that the search engine will "study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results." Data from +1 buttons won’t replace PageRank — if it’s actually used, it will be one of more than 200 signals used by Google to determine rankings. However, this potential move could be seen as Google unfairly using its search engine was bait to compel websites to use its +1 button and to boost Google+ as an alternative to Facebook. Oh, and spammers and black-hat SEOs will do their best to take advantage of this. (Wired.com, WebProNews)

5 Steps to Building Links With Widgets

“Widgets are one of the best-kept secrets marketers can use to capture the attention of potential visitors and drive traffic to your website.” Widgets allow you to go beyond links and video to boost interaction and connection of websites. Here are the widgets “rules of thumb”: transparency, no bait and switch, and brand attribution. Also included in this post are the SEO litmus test, development guidelines for widgets, widget promotion and measurement. (Search Engine Watch)

5 SEO Tasks You Should Do Right Now

SEO is far from a secret-filled magical task. Boosting your traffic and search engine rankings is as simple as these five steps: 1) optimize your title tag, 2) make your meta description tag count, 3) use LSI keywords in your content, 4) check your Web stats and 5) build links. (Pandia, Marketing Pilgrim)

6 Key Findings From the 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey

The 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey from BrightLocal.com offers insights on a variety of topics, including annual turnover, growth predictions and which SEO tasks SEOs enjoy or dislike the most. Among the six key findings shared here are that 31 percent of SEOs turnover over less than $30,000 in the last 12 months, local SEOs handled more clients this year than last year and most SEOs charge $100-250 for Google Places optimization. (Search Engine Land)

Google+ Users vs. Facebook Users

comScore shares some insights into what the Google+ and Facebook users look like. The biggest differences were in ages and income levels, as Google+ users skew toward 18-34 year olds and typically earn more. iPhone and Android users are also compared, along with Red Sox and Yankees fans. (comScore)

Amazon’s Tablet Could Be Formidable

A Forrester Research analyst predicts that Amazon could sell as many as 5 million tablet PCs in 2011 and become the top rival to Apple in the space. While the price of Amazon’s tablet is unknown, “Amazon has more options than any other tablet-maker that could be used to subsidize the cost of a tablet.” (GigaOM)

Google Hints at Upcoming Algorithm Change

Google’s Matt Cutts put out a call for identifying scraper sites in search results. “We need datapoints for testing,” Cutts tweeted. “It’s not entirely unusual for Google to call for help like this, but it’s noteworthy because the issue of scraper sites has been particularly prominent in recent months.” The Panda update didn’t do too much to combat scraper sites, and this call for help is an opportunity for those critics to report what they’re complaining about. (Search Engine Land)

7 Current Trends in SEO to Boost Your Ranking

SEO is a constantly changing field, which means it behooves you to keep abreast of what’s working today. Here are seven current SEO trends: 1) varied backlinks, 2) nofollow vs. dofollow, 3) outbound links, 4) link velocity, 5) multitier backlinks,, 6) social networking and 7) increased content. (Search Engine People)

Did Twitter Screw up Its Advertising Model?

Twitter might have just made its worst advertising blunder yet: A search for “hurricane irene” showed a comedic promoted tweet that offered no helpful information. While the tactic of piggybacking off of major events isn’t new, what’s noteworthy is Twitter’s allowance of such a promoted tweet to run on its site. “Twitter has a responsibility as a platform here, to ensure that people are seeing the best content possible. And this is largely unique to Twitter because of the way in which promoted tweets are served.” (Simply Zesty)

9 Actionable Tips for Link Prospecting

Link prospecting consumes a lot of time. While it’s often easy to start off with, the challenge grows as time wears on. Among the nine actionable tips for link prospecting are conducting advanced search queries, using Twitter tools to find niche bloggers, looking at blogroll and directory links, and conducting reverse image search. (SEOmoz)

How to Strategically Analyze the Competition’s PPC Campaigns

Examining your competitors’ PPC ads is helpful for extracting data about how they influence conversions. It also offers a lens through which you can analyze your own ads. Here’s a look at a five-step process for doing this, along with some helpful tools, including iSpionage, Keyword Spy, SEMRush and Rapid Keyword. (Search Engine Watch)

Who Is Tim Cook?

Who’s Tim Cook? Well, for starters he’s the new CEO of Apple, replacing Steve Jobs after his resignation on Wednesday. Cook’s appointment should come as no surprise to those who’ve followed the company closely. After all, he’s already served as the effective head of Apple whenever Jobs was on medical leave. “Cook arguably did as much as anyone to turn Apple around after its nearly disastrous fall in the mid-1990s.” In an email, Cook assured the company that “Apple is not going to change.” While it might be impossible to replace Jobs, Cook and his talents are not a bad start. (Wired.com, Ars Technica)

Facebook Now Permits Ads for Offline Gambling, Lotteries, Dietary Supplements

Facebook updated its Ad Guidelines to permit advertising for offline gambling, lottery commission and legal dietary supplements – verticals that were previously prohibited. “The changes will give a wider range of industries the opportunity to attain customers through Facebook highly targetable ads, and could generate more advertising revenue for the social network.” (Inside Facebook)

The State of the State for Email and Social

Email is the original social network, so it came as no surprise to the vice president of industry relations for Silverpop that much of the conversations at Social Media Insider Summit revolved around email and social. Here’s a rundown of some observations: 1) email industry crossover, 2) email as social utility, 3) social’s impact on email creative, and 4) social CRM and channel optimization. (MediaPost)

How Long Should Page Titles Be?

The ideal title length has always been a subject of much debate in SEO circles. While it was important to use keywords that search engines would pick up on, make appealing titles that would lure clicks on SERPs and keep titles concise so they wouldn’t be cut off by search engines, now there’s a new factor: social media. Among the things to consider now are extra room for retweets, getting rid of special/weird characters, and choosing between getting clicks and focusing on keywords. (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

Remarketing Success and Advanced Strategies

Of all the new ways to better target your audience on Google’s Display Network, remarketing works the best, “hands down.” Here’s a look at some testimonies of experiences with remarketing, which note a high number of conversions, lower CPLs with text ads, higher CPLs with image ads and room for growth with advanced strategies. Also included in this post is a look at how to employ these advanced strategies. (PPC Hero)

How Google+ Will Win and Why You’ll Use it Whether You Want to or Not

Tom Anderson, founder and former president of MySpace, writes about why all those "Google+ is doomed" articles are wrong. Journalists bashing Google+ don’t quite understand the social network and are missing a big point: "Unlike, every other competitor in the social networking space, G+ has a unique advantage: google.com, youtube.com, blogger.com, and gmail.com. These four domains are some of the most trafficked in the world." In other news, Google has updated its +1 button to enable users to automatically share content on their Google+ accounts. (The Next Web, VentureBeat)

5 Reasons Why Brand Marketers Should Use Search Retargeting

"Search retargeting allows you to marry your existing keyword lists with relevant banner ads to target consumers who have demonstrated interest in a particular offering, and search retargeting enables you to continue the conversation with prospective customers beyond the search engines." It offers brand marketers a great way to target consumers who recently searched on your targeted terms. This post offers a rundown of search retargeting, along with five reasons to use it: 1) reach intenders, 2) create custom segments for each campaign, 3) avoid the wait to build cookie pools, 4) adjust segments during campaigns and 5) get valuable insights into your target audience. (Search Engine Land)

Advertising in Mobile Games Needs Fixing

When it comes to conversion rate and intrusion factor, banner ads and pop-ups are the worst forms of advertising today. So why are they the only commonly used forms of mobile advertising? "When your number one ad-related monetization method is to get people to pay you to stop annoying them, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong." (Betable)

RIM’s BlackBerrys Will Run Android Apps

RIM plans on enabling its BlackBerry models running on its new QNX software to handle applications built for Google’s Android mobile operating system, according to "three people familiar with the plan." This move appears to be an attempt at boosting the appeal of BlackBerrys, which have one-sixth the number of apps as Android does. (Bloomberg)

What New TLDs Could Mean for Search

Advertisers are up in arms over the plan by ICANN to add up to 1,000 new top-level domains (TLDs). The implications for natural search and SEO could be huge, though no one knows how huge. Direct navigation, retraining consumers, search engines taking into account keywords to the right of the dot — these highlight some of the concerns involved. (ClickZ)