The Week in Review

10 Tips for Getting Fans via Facebook Advertising

Managing pay-per-click Facebook ads can be more complex than managing Google campaigns "because you’re not just dealing with simple keyword-targeted ads (the first mistake people typically make when looking at Facebook)." Here are 10 tactics for getting real-world fans via Facebook ads — they cover targeting, friends of fans, ad creative and ad rotation, among other things. (ClickZ)

 

4 Free Tools for Socially Monitoring Your Brand

To start listening to what’s being said about you in social spheres on the Web, look at the keywords and phrases people use to find your site. Then think of keywords and phrases you’ve heard clients/customers use when you’ve talked with them. After that, consider these four free tools to monitor what people are saying about you via social networks and blogs: Google email alert system, SocialMention, TweetDeck and Technorati. (Social Media Examiner)

 

The God Complex in SEO

"Trusting a powerful authority is easy. It allows us to have a quick shorthand for how things work without having to go through the pain, effort, & expense to figure things out. But it often leads to bogus solutions." Nothing replaces experience in the SEO industry. While we don’t control Google, we can exert influence over the variables Google has opted to pay attention to. (SEOBook.com)

 

Bing Quality Scores: Do They Matter?

Broad-match keywords led to solid performance on Microsoft adCenter — until quality scores came around. Here’s a look at a small experiment that magically led to vastly improved quality scores. While more testing is needed to truly confirm anything, initial results seem quite positive: "CTR jumped dramatically, average position improved, CPC improved, and CPA dropped like a rock (except that when the rock landed on the client’s head, it turned out to be a wad of cash)." Here are five steps to take in light of these results. It might be time to start taking match-types and quality scores in Bing as seriously as you do in Google. (SEOmoz)

 

Google+ Is the Social Backbone

"The launch of Google+ is the beginning of a fundamental change on the web. A change that will tear down silos, empower users and create opportunities to take software and collaboration to new levels." Google+ isn’t just about Google vs. Facebook — it’s the foundation of a commodity social layer for the Internet. Facebook can’t be the social backbone Google+ can, primarily because it’s a closed platform. Google+, on the other hand, combines a flexible social model with a widespread user base for a company that doesn’t primarily rely on the social graph. (O’Reilly Radar)

Should You Bid on Keywords You Already Organically Rank for?

If you already rank organically for a term, here’s an experiment you can run to determine whether you should buy that keyword. Regardless of the results, creating dedicated landing pages is often a good idea. "With SEO, your pages must have certain elements to rank well. With paid search, you can purely focus on conversion actions and not have to worry about a search algorithm’s opinion of your site." (Search Engine Land)

 

What Is an Email Address Worth Today?

An email address can have many different forms of value — as a cost-saving proxy, a combined asset value, driver of engagement, etc. But to explain the value of this asset, you need to think about things a bit differently. Here are six steps to do that. (MediaPost)

 

The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google AdWords

"Insurance," "loans" and "mortgage" are the three most expensive keywords in Google AdWords advertising. This colorful infographic includes the rest of the 20 most expensive keywords in AdWords. Among the tips for bidding in a super-competitive keyword niche are to be specific, use negative keywords and be relevant. (WordStream)

 

How to Optimize 3 Important Internal Link Structures

Aligning internal link connectivity with SEO best practices is an overlooked aspect of successful SEO campaigns. Here are three important link structures, along with tactics to optimize them: 1) the global navigation template, 2) breadcrumb navigation and 3) alternative link structures. "The primary purpose of all three types of these link structures is to aid users in finding information. By ensuring that the link text used in these structures is keyword focused, you help search engines determine relevancy and also aid users by using language that is consistent with how they search for information." (Search Engine Watch)

 

How Bing Selects Photos to Appear on Its Home Page Every Day

You know those pretty photos in Bing’s background each day? Well, there’s a team that actually meets every few weeks to choose those. An editor at Bing says its background photos are a way to differentiate the site and "to make things come alive and more approachable." Photos are voted up or down, then a writer is tasked to enhance the experience. (Fast Company)

U.S. Mobile Advertising: $1.2 Billion in 2011

A new report from JP Morgan expects U.S. mobile ad spending to reach $1.2 billion this year, about double what it was last year. This is in line with an eMarketer forecast that U.S. mobile advertising will reach $1.1 billion in 2011. (MediaPost)

 

How to Make Paid Search Work

Paid search can attract highly targeted traffic and new sources of revenue, but "it only pays off if you develop a paid search plan that is perfect for your unique company." Among the 10 tips for making paid search work for you are: test different ads, consider branded keywords, play with punctuation and spelling, and watch trends. (Ringgle)

 

Facebook Sponsored Stories Are Performing Twice as Well as Standard Ads

Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad units take content generated by Facebook users and turn it into ads. This new format was unveiled six months ago and encountered some reservations. But according to the company’s vice president of advertising and global operations, Sponsored Stories ads, which cost just as much as standard Facebook ads, are performing twice as well, on average. "The reason people come back to Facebook is to engage with their friends. That’s exactly what Sponsored Stories do — they’re showing [those actions] to those friends users have already decided to share with." (Fast Company)

 

How to Build Multipurpose Landing Pages for Small-Budget Advertising

Using a robust landing-page-optimization program is a pricey endeavor with a significant learning curve. But for companies working with smaller budgets, all you need is "time, budget and manpower to utilize a design team and software that builds a landing page for every paid, organic, social and email marketing keyword or blast you send." The five steps are: 1) lay out your landing page, 2) target keywords, 3) add content, 4) create calls to action and 5) track it. (Search Engine Land)

 

5 Reasons Why Google+ Won’t Kill Facebook

Google+ isn’t a Facebook killer. "It’s an interesting social media experiment by Google, but it is likely to remain that. Another "almost ran" in the social media game; another Google property that just won’t quite make it." Here are five reasons why: 1) usability, 2) verbiage, 3) usefulness, 4) purpose and 5) convenience. (Search Engine Watch)

AdWords Top vs. Side Ad Performance

Google recently unveiled its new "top vs. side" report segment for AdWords accounts. " Basically the idea here is that you can see how your ads perform when they’re placed above search results versus when they’re placed below search results — the focus here being on physical position on the page rather than the numeric order in which the ads appear." Here’s a rundown of what this looks like, what to do with it and how important this segment is. (WordStream)

 

NYT and DDD Target Google’s Local SEO Spam Problem

The New York Times and Digital Due Diligence (DDD) teamed up once again to spotlight companies using questionable SEO tactics. These "outings" are the topic of discussion for many industry leaders. Here’s a rundown of some thoughts on the matter, including a funny relationship between DDD and the problem it’s attempting to take on. (Search Engine Watch)

 

Beat Panda by Splitting Into Multiple Sites

Google’s Panda update has hit unintended victims who have been looking for ways to recover. While many have been unsuccessful, one solution may have been unearthed. “That secret: break up a site zapped by Panda into lots of smaller sites.” HubPages, which lost about half of its traffic after the Panda update, reorganized its subdomain-based sites and is seeing early evidence of success. (Econsultancy)

 

How to Grow Social Media Leads

Two recent studies from HubSpot and Edison Research provide new insights into how to enhance social media and blogging strategies. The five takeaways highlighted in this post are: 1) more frequent blog posts bring greater traffic and leads; 2) a steady library of blog posts grew leads and traffic better; 3) more Twitter followers mean more leads; 4) bigger Facebook fan bases mean better results; 5) social demographics are growing. “If you want to generate leads through social media, try blogging more frequently and growing your reach—all with an understanding of your target audience.” (Social Media Examiner)

 

5 Factors That Improve CTR Effectiveness for Online Video Ads

According to a new white paper from TidalTV, by varying CTR various factors, you’ll be able to get a better idea of your campaigns’ effectiveness. Here are five factors: 1) category performance, 2) demographic (gender and age) performance, 3) day of the week/daypart performance, 4) contextual performance and 5) geographic performance. (ReelSEO)

 

3 Checkpoints for Better Ad Targeting

Ad targeting has a bit of a bad aura about it from the consumer’s standpoint. But in reality, ad targeting may be good for both marketers and consumers. What breaks that trust for consumers is when the ads aren’t designed with the consumer in mind. To make targeted ads more effective, give consumers content they care about, avoid boring creative and set a cap on frequency. (HubSpot)

 

Mobile Ads Do Better Than Standard Banner Ads

According to recent numbers from MediaMind, the mobile click-through rate (CTR) in North America in the first quarter of 2011 was 0.61 percent, which was far superior to the 0.07 percent CTR for online banner ads. eMarketer estimates that U.S. advertisers will spend more than $1.1 billion on mobile this year, up 48 percent from 2010 spending. (eMarketer)

 

Photovine Unveiled

Photovine has finally opened up, but what is it? We know it’s a photo service built by Google-owned Slide, but besides that it’s still a bit of a mystery. The platform merges the ability to upload photos with social interactions, and while it’s not far-fetched to expect some kind of integration with Google+, that’s pure speculation at this point. (PCMag.com, Digital Trends)

 

3 Dead Excuses for Poorly Designed Landing Pages

Landing pages are notorious for their poor designs. Bad landing pages mean three things: 1) they look amateurish or ugly, 2) they don’t provide holistically compelling content and 3) they don’t win over customers. Here’s an overview of three excuses that just don’t cut it. (Search Engine Land)

 

The State of the Internet in 2011

This isn’t your everyday infographic. The “State of the Internet” HTML5 infographic is interactive and visually engaging. Oh, and it also summarizes a whole lot of information about the Internet as it is today. Among the tidbits of information are that there are 119 million tweets per day, there are more searches for Justin Bieber than for Jesus, and your Facebook profile is worth $91. (OnlineSchools.org)