There are a wealth of key performance indicators for Web sites -- from new leads generated, to the number of article or page views, and white paper or PDF downloads -- and their relative importance will vary depending on the nature of the business. But as the shift into Web 2.0 continues, new KPIs are emerging -- metrics that go beyond on-site activity -- including how many users have embedded an available widget, and how highly ranked the videos on a site are. This short piece from the Enquiro blog offers a few suggestions, providing fodder for Webmasters …

Monitoring the competition when it comes to keyword rankings is often a daily task for SEO managers, but for pros working with major brands, there's the added problem of rivals actually hijacking branded keywords. This can be as simple as a local car dealer ranking higher for "Honda Civic" than the local Honda dealership -- or as complex as a site created to trash a brand (for example, www.lowes-sucks.com) that claims a high-ranking organic search position. Ayohwahr's Tom Crandall provides screenshots of a similar situation that the Jiffy Lube auto maintenance company was facing, and …

Associate editor Eric Lander argues that despite its easy-to-use interface and cheap (read: FREE) price tag, serious search pros need to go beyond Google Analytics for a real view of their site's traffic, conversions and other analytics info. He lists three main reasons why Google Analytics' page-tagging technology offers Webmasters a limited view of a site's performance -- including its inability to track spider or crawler activity, its lack of log-supported info like IP addresses and referral strings, as well as the inability to take the reports and data it supplies offline. While Lander isn't saying scrap GA …

According to Jon Miller, executive vice president of marketing automation software firm Marketo, when most B2B companies use PPC advertising, snagging a lead -- not a sale -- is the primary "post-click" goal. This makes sense, since B2B offerings often include consulting services, software packages or other, more involved purchases that aren't fully served by text on a Web page. But getting users to enter their information (at the risk of signing themselves up for SPAM, annoying sales calls or worse) is much more difficult than getting them to click on a PPC ad -- and the conversion …