PPC Hero
If a particular landing page is undeperforming, it may not be the ad copy, according to John Lee. It might be a fluke in the design/navigation of the page itself. And so Lee devotes an entire blog post (the first of a landing page-focused series) to design tweaks you can make to boost conversions and build authority. First, keep your call to action above the fold. Some insiders may urge you to try to get all the content -- including headlines, forms, buttons and images -- above the fold, but Lee argues that that's not a realistic mandate. …
Unofficial Google Analytics Blog
Caitlin Minteer reviews the latest Google Website Optimizer upgrades, including tweaks to the color notification system for experiments, the ability to disable specific testing combinations and the option to test/validate pages that may be offline. First up are the color changes. "Previously, the colors used in the reporting interface occasionally suggested that a combination was winning and often times people would end experiments before a sufficient amount of data had collected," she says. "The colors are now yellow until a clear confidence winner is found, and the colors become green for winning combinations or red for losing combinations." …
Seer Interactive
Adam explains that Facebook listings are creeping into the SERPs at a much faster rate than expected, giving online marketers -- particularly e-tailers -- strong competition for eyeballs, clicks and conversions. "Where are these rankings showing up? Searches for Victoria's Secret, Nike Shoes, Vodka, and Coldplay bring back Facebook as the 28th, 30th, 51st, and 28th result respectively," he says. "While ranking 30th isn't impressive, the fact remains that Facebook isn't trying and they were also not ranking AT ALL a few days ago." And he thinks that the trend will likely continue, with the Facebook …
e-consultancy
A new report is pegging U.K. marketers' paid search spending to dwarf the amount of budget they devote to organic optimization. "This year, E-consultancy anticipates companies will dedicate £2.7 billion to search engine promotions," writes Kevin Gibbons. "Of that, it estimates £2.42 billion will go on paid tactics, while £330 million will be spent on search engine optimisation." The spending likely mirrors the very uneven split between paid and organic search spending in the U.S., highlighting the fact that ROI from PPC ads is easier to calculate -- making it much easier for marketing team to justify as …
Search Engine Journal
Getting your articles indexed and ranked in Google News should be simple enough, if you follow these tips Ann Smarty has culled from a number of blog posts and her own field research. First, make sure you've got the minimum technical and content requirements -- that is, publish articles at least three times per day, give each article a unique H1/H2 tag that matches the page's title, and make sure the URLs seem static. For the overall site, try to have more than one author (each with their own page), include your organization's name and a logo/tagline that …
MoreVisibility
So you want to target Spanish-speaking Internet users with your PPC ads? Amber Farley offers five quick tips for launching a Hispanic-focused paid search campaign -- starting with testing to see whether your particular audience responds better to English or Spanish ads. "According to comScore Media Metrix, 52% of online Hispanics are English dominant, 21% are Spanish dominant, and 27% are bilingual," Farley says. "It's best to test both to see what brings in the highest conversion rate." If your target skews toward Spanish language, hire a native speaker to write and translate your ad copy. Test …
Pandia Search News
Search 1.x is a new resource that features articles, links to free tools, a directory of search engines, and even a discussion forum. The Pandia Search team gives it center stage in this post, noting that while it may be hard to build a thriving community, founder Felix Liao is at least generating the content to support it. "The blog design is a bit unusual, as it orders the post in a kind of newspaper layout," the team says. "It works well, though, and there are quite a few interesting articles there already."
MarketingSherpa
MarketingSherpa's latest case study goes a bit beyond search to show how one Web site owner used testimonials and targeted media coverage to boost conversions. After all, getting visitors to your page is one thing. Getting them to sign up, subscribe or make a purchase is another. And for the TheFamilyPost.com, snagging conversions in the crowded photo-sharing and scrapbooking market was key. The Web site first targeted non-techie publications and media outlets to get the word out to its audience--30- to 50-year-old women who weren't particularly tech-savvy--and followed up by snagging endorsements from well-known brands like Adobe and …
SEO Book
Aaron Wall poses the concept of "black hole SEO," or a Web site that attracts as many inbound links as possible but doesn't share the love by linking out. "Increasingly, top-tier sites are becoming cagey about linking out," he says. "They are more than happy to be linked to, of course, but often the favor is not reciprocated." He lists the New York Times as the prime offender, but also Wikipedia and TechCrunch as examples; arguing that each company has essentially created a black hole by garnering tons of inbound links and only linking to internal pages or …
Small Business SEM
Matt McGee piggybacks on a recent Google Webmaster Central blog post highlighting some of the top questions posed in the forums, and highlights the answers most relevant to SEO. For example, did you know that sitelinks are displayed dynamically? According to Maile Ohye: "In some search results, the sitelinks displayed are determined algorithmically based on the user's query. So, while Webmaster Tools may show 8 sitelinks for your verified site, it's possible that search results show only a subset." The content of each link (i.e. the title and page it directs users to) can also vary depending on …