The Week in Review

Buy Google +1s in Bulk

Surprise, surprise: Plussem.com, a branch of SEOShop.com, is selling Google +1s in bulk: 50 for $10, 250 for $30, or 2,000 for $170. Search engine users and Internet marketers should consider themselves warned. For marketers, the short-term benefits don’t outweigh the potential for dire long-term consequences. (The Atlantic, Search Engine Land)

Use Video to Boost Email Marketing CTR

Subject lines are important for open rates, but getting recipients to click relies on a few inches of content that "will either entice readers to take an action, such as clicking a link or subscribing, or cause them to hit the delete button." Enter video, the crown jewel of email marketing content. Here are some tips for including video content in email marketing messages to increase click-through rates. For example, include a thumbnail image of the video that directs readers to a landing page. (MediaPost)

Mobile Advertising Is Overrated

Mobile ads could be effective, but they’re not yet. They’re "annoying, ugly and often irrelevant to the end user." Various studies have also found that not many mobile users pay attention to or care for mobile ads. Banner ads had the same problem about a decade ago, though they’ve made strides since then. This means mobile advertising has a few things to learn from banner advertising, especially when it comes to targeting and design. (VentureBeat)

3 AdWords Strategies for Mature PPC Campaigns

"Your Google AdWords campaigns have reached a plateau. You’re struggling to increase your sales, and struggling to keep click costs down. No matter how hard you try to optimize your campaigns, nothing seems to change." If this sounds like your situation, here are three important tactics to help your mature PPC campaigns: 1) go after the long tail, 2) qualify your keywords and 3) tailor your ads. (Search Engine People)

5 Tips for Choosing PPC Keywords

Your keyword list is your garden — you’re the gardener. "Plant the right keywords at the right time, and you’ll have wonderful results. However, if you choose incorrectly or don’t watch your list carefully, you will fail and your garden will be full of weeds that need to be pulled." To avoid having to pull out weeds later on, bear these five tips in mind: 1) do your homework, 2) leverage match types to control experience and gain insight, 3) remember the search experiences across devices, 4) try new Google betas, and 5) don’t just set and forget your keyword list. (Search Engine Watch)

Keyword Selection

Organic search has dramatically changed in the last decade, along with search engine results pages and the SEO tactics needed to be successful in the space. Despite the evolution, some principles have remained the same — but it all starts with keyword selection. This post discusses search volume, relevance and user intent, and business impact. (Search Engine Watch)

All About E-Commerce

Here’s a roundup of 10 recent infographics about e-commerce. Among the tidbits of information are that 44 percent of consumers plan to buy books online in the future, North Dakota is the U.S. state with the highest percent of income spent online, and that 85 percent of shoppers point to color as a primary reason for buying a particular product. (Econsultancy)

5 Steps for Better Mobile Link-Building

Link-building is necessary for search engine results on smartphones. To get more links to your mobile site, follow these five steps: 1) don’t just focus on apps, 2) publicize your mobile site via mobile directories and awards sites, 3) use mobile information architecture and content, 4) aim for great mobile functionality, and 5) don’t put canonical tags on your entire mobile site. (Search Engine Land)

5 Tips for Your First Facebook Ads

If you’re just starting to embark on the path to Facebook ads, here are five tricks to keep up your sleeve: 1) use less copy, and simple and bright images (also know which images convert best); 2) target interests and demographics; 3) change your creative often; 4) set a spending level; 5) use CompFight. (Social Fresh)

Bing Testing Ads Between Organic and Free Search Results

Bing was seen tinkering with placing ads between the organic free search results. This is just a test, according to director of search at Microsoft, and if the experience isn’t up to par, it won’t be rolled out. "Of course, PPC managers and management companies would love to see this. It would drive their clicks and conversions up drastically. But would you ever see such an implementation from Bing?" (Search Engine Roundtable)

iOS vs. Android: Mobile Advertising

This infographic offers a simple overview of iOS vs. Android when it comes to mobile advertising. Included are eCPM, global fill rate and CTR figures, as well as the average app life cycles by ad requests and the top five countries for each mobile OS. (The inneractive Blog)

How Google+ Will Transform Search and Search Marketing

Here’s a look at what most people haven’t written about yet – the way Google+ may “end up enhancing the competitive positioning and value of Google’s search business, giving it an unprecedented view of consumer interest, social graph, intent data and conversion data.” The advent of Google+ means that Facebook is no longer the sole horse in the race, which will lead to more innovation, a better social networking experience, and improved advertising results and options. (AdAge.com)

Google+ Will Have Games

A page (that has since been taken down) revealed plans for Games Stream for Google+, a place that would presumably gather results from social gaming on the new online network. This isn’t the first hint that Google+ would involve games – some functionality has been buried within the code for the site. This would obviously be a jab at Facebook. (SlashGear)

5 Apps to Help Add Game Mechanics to Your Site

Gamification is being heralded as an important trend for social engagement. “It really follows one simple rule: to get users excited about your product, you need to engage them. Fiercely.” Badgeville, OneTrueFan, stopped.at, Bigdoor Media and Bunchball are five apps to help your site to be more gamified. (Flowtown)

Is IT in Your In-House SEO Circle?

How can you add IT into your in-house SEO circle? Use the TEAM Approach: transparency, embedded groups, alignment and management buy-in. Five steps to strengthen the SEO-IT relationship are: 1) educate and invest, 2) make a business case, 3) include SEO best practices in guidelines, 4) empower IT with tools, and 5) decode “geeky” SEO language into “geeky” IT language. (Search Engine Watch)

Search Ads Drive 89% Incremental Traffic

According to a study conducted by Google researchers, 89 percent of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused — in other words, the incremental ad clicks percentage across verticals is 89 percent. This study aims to shed light on whether search ads cannibalize organic traffic. (Google Research Blog)

Is Content Marketing Better Than Advertising?

According to a study from Econsultancy and Adobe, 64 percent of marketers think content marketing is more important than advertising. However, 42 percent said their organizations are weak when it comes to earning media without paying for it. Marketers need to study content marketing, experiment with it, stick with it and beat it. (Marketing Pilgrim)

Spelling is Important

Spelling errors on websites, especially commercial ones, can kill conversion rates and reputation. Three tips to avoid spelling mistakes are: 1) don’t rely on spell-checkers, 2) use multiple human editors and 3) make sure your graphics people use the spell-checker in Photoshop for images that include words. (Search Engine Watch)

Where to Trim the Fat to Increase Load Speed

Load speeds not only influences sales, it also affects SEO. Here’s a look at how you can examine your site’s speed performance, along with how to approach fixes. "Removing the background image and changing the path from the secure server to the regular server dropped the homepage load time from 12 seconds down to 4.5 seconds." A simple application is to weigh your top 20 entry pages. (Search Engine Land)

SEO Developments to Know About

Google’s new search interface, the recent update to PageRank and +1 button impressions are among SEO developments to know about. Here’s a rundown of each, along with what to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. (WebProNews)

Mobile Email Marketing Visualized

One in three consumers said they are accessing mobile email; special offers are the most preferred types of mobile emails; and 55 percent of consumers check their mobile email at least once a day. These are just some of the juicy morsels of information included in this infographic about mobile email. (Econsultancy)

How In-House Search Marketers Can Capitalize on the +1 Button

It’s a foregone conclusion that +1 counts will directly affect quality score for paid search and ranks for organic results. But what should in-house search marketers do in response to this pervasive button? Don’t opt out, get +1 buttons on your organization’s website and consider reminding friends to +1 quality paid-search ads when they see them. (Search Engine Land)

6 Ways to Convert Social Media Traffic Into Leads

How do you turn lurkers into leads? First, understand the relationship between your lead-generation strategies, social media channels, blog and landing pages. Then remember the typical lead-conversion process: status update, blog post, landing page. Here are six tips for converting your social media traffic into leads: 1) offer an email blog subscription, 2) add a "Welcome" pop-up for new visitors to drive email subscribers, 3) include relevant calls to action on your blog posts, 4) keep it light and easy, 5) be your own advertiser, and 6) optimize your offers with landing pages. (Social Media Examiner)

Condensing and Repositioning SEO Copy with jQuery Sliders

How can you cut a category page’s length in half while placing the juiciest bits of content highest in the code without turning to gray-hat tactics? Use jQuery sliders, of course. "What’s more, it will force your copywriters to actually write something useful for the user instead of just garbage SEO filler." (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

Most Email Opens Happen Within the First Hour After Delivery

According to MailerMailer, email open rates have steadily sagged during the last three-and-a-half years, settling in at 11.4 percent in the second half of 2010. The company also found that 12.4 percent of a typical message’s opens occur in the first hour after delivery. (MailerMailer)