• Many Happy Returns From Social Media Campaign
    The best viral campaigns are those that keep bringing returns on investment. Eric Brown makes a few suggestions on how to turn an ordinary marketing campaign into a viral campaign that produces a "compound return" on your investment. One piece of advice he provides: Don't hesitate to experiment with social media, and make sure to involve your customers. Brown provides a useful example: he used social media sites to ask residents of his apartments if they wanted to be involved in photos for company marketing materials, which have since gone viral (everybody wants to show off the photos of their …
  • Studer Talks Semantic Search Research
    Yahoo ran an interview with Dr. Rudi Studer on semantic search technologies earlier this month that I thought would provide you with beneficial insights. The professor in Applied Informatics at University of Karlsuhe has done research on ontology management, semantic Web services, and knowledge management. While applications built on semantic technologies are meant to help search engines more precisely match queries with user intent, experts at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo understand the process has been much more difficult to realize. The lengthy and informative post details Studer's research on semantic search and provides answers to many questions around exposing …
  • 3.7 Billion External Backinks To Google.com
    Eric Enge interviews Alex Chudnovsky, the founder of Majestic-12, a U.K.-based firm that specializes in cross-platform .NET/C# development and data analysis applications that focus on creating Web search engines. Chudnovsky talks about the relevance of backlinks and how search engines differentiate between more and less popular sites. Chudnovsky's company built a large index close to the size of Yahoo and Google, and in February launched a commercial offshoot, Majestic-SEO, to help fund further research and development in SEO. Similar to Google Webmaster Tools, the service provides reports on competitors' Web sites for a fee. Providing insight on the …
  • Keyword Organization Made Easy
    Here are some quick tips on organizing your keywords with a free open-source utility called WikiPad. Ann Smarty refers to the tool as a handy desk-top application that helps organize notes in a wiki-type format. She steps through the process with a few examples. Start by creating a new wiki in the WikiPad and name it for your core term. Smarty uses the words DogTraining. The tool lets you manage and grow an interlinked multilevel keyword tree. Aside from organizing keywords, you can use WikiPad to organize daily tasks, brainstorm new articles, and store and organize ideas.
  • Back To Basics
    Start with the basics and you will find success more quickly, according to Ron Jones. Knowing your target audience is probably the most important factor in designing a new site. This will help you anticipate their needs and the best keywords to use to keep them coming back. After determining a set of 1 to 3 keywords per page, embed them on the page to help emphasize the content, he writes. He also discusses internal links, and also provides tips on the types of Web content, structures and technologies to avoid.
  • Have Social Networks Become The New Email?
    Have social networks become the new email? Strange that my mother should ask me that same question last night, yet many marketers still fail to grasp this new concept. Erik Qualman explains that companies build elaborate YouTube pages, but place links or icons on the page that make users click away from the social network. Rather than whisk away site visitors from the social network page to their company Web site to capture a lead, they should court the visitor on the site. Sending them away from the YouTube page, he believes, does both the marketers and consumer a disservice. …
  • 50 Links To Google Analytics Aid
    Does Google Analytics have you a bit confused? If you want to start analyzing data and tracking performance, but you're not quite sure how, this post offers 50 links to resources for anyone looking to get the most out of the tool. Broken into four sections, the post offers something for beginner to seasoned professional. It begins with tips and tricks, followed by a section on plug-ins, hacks and additions that includes MooTools, jQuery, and seven plug-ins and reports you probably didn't know about. The final section, News & Advanced Features, offers links to tips about tools created …
  • Learning Search Lessons From Pinocchio
    Jennifer Laycock begins to explore the lessons you can learn from the classic story "Pinocchio" with this post, which explores her Pinocchio Effect theory that "deep down, search engines want nothing more than to be real boys (or girls)." In other words, "search engines seek to replicate human judgment with their algorithm." Laycock tells us why chasing down algorithms simply leaves you exhausted and suggests how to apply common sense solutions related to the Pinocchio Effect. In time, the process becomes increasingly clear. "Each and every adjustment made to the algorithms is designed to better judge a site the …
  • How To Increase RSS Subscribers And Live To Tell About It
    Glen Allsopp used BLVD Status and Google Analytics to check Web site traffic and realized that out of about 900 visitors he received, only three people subscribed. In this post he shares tricks to "massively" increase RSS subscribers through images and code. One trick is using a "big arrow (call to action) pointing to your RSS feed or subscriptions box" -- which helped him bring in 30 subscribers on about 300 site visitors. "A 10% subscription rate is very rare and I'm pretty excited about the potential of putting a big arrow in people's faces ;)," he writes. …
  • 'Do Not Track' Legislation On The Way
    Do you remember the "Do Not Call" legislation that was sure to stop telemarketers from disturbing you at 6 p.m. during dinner? Bernard Lunn rehashes a New York Times article that ran in March to bring back a discussion on Do Not Track legislation, likening it to a Do Not Call list. Lunn, who emphasizes marketers are not united in their thinking, gives several reasons why this online legislation is inevitable. And its passage should redefine the online ad landscape as well. For one, "Do Not Track will be about as much fun for Behavioral Targeting as Do …
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