• A Guide To Event Tracking, Virtual Pageviews
    Jessica provides a guide and tells marketers why they should care about Google Analytics IQ testing -- event tracking and virtual pageviews. She runs through two basic ways to modify Analytics code to measure goal metrics, and explains why event tracking will not skew pageview results, but search marketers should know the difference.
  • Taking Spreadsheets On The Road
    Got an iPhone? Ann Smarty reviews five spreadsheet apps for the handset that might come in handy on the go. This self-proclaimed "Excel fanatic" explains there are dozens of iPhone spreadsheet apps -- but these are the top picks, according to Smarty. She tells us the reasons behind her choices and gives a brief overview of each, along with the downsides.
  • Google Patent Sheds Light On Social Strategy
    There's a ton of speculation surrounding what Google's social media strategy might look like in the long term, but here's some insight from Bill Slawski, who digs into a patent on social messaging originally filed in October 2010. The social messaging user interface describes a hub and interface for social interaction, and possibly may include an "availability indicator" to identify when others are available to communicate.
  • Ranking High For Competitive Keywords
    Optimizing pages correctly can control search engine results. URL sequence, page titles, and proper coding must be in sync. Case Ernsting suggests focusing on a strategy to funnel Web links toward specific pages. This should improve rankings and traffic to the site, he writes. Be patient, though. It took two months for Ernsting to make obvious progress.
  • How Search Engines Determine Quality
    Search engines are placing more emphasis on original copy that adds value, but how do they calculate the quality of Web pages? Bill Slawski shows us how to assess the credibility of a company's Web site. He lays out Google's quality guidelines, explains the Panda algorithm update, and explains how to assess the credibility of content and people on the Web in social media.
  • 5 Tips To Boost SEO Results
    Business listings have become competitive. Rand Fishkin gives us five useful ways to boost the visibility of local sites on the Web, earn more Places citations and reviews, and have the listing serve up in competitive local search engine results pages. Fishkin guides SEO professionals through image results, event calendars, social profiles and more.
  • Demand Falls 40 Percent
    Experian Hitwise notes that Demand Media traffic has fallen 40% since Google implemented its Panda algorithm, also known as Farmer -- which is intended to weed out low-quality or unoriginal content. Demand Media recently denied the allegations, but the reports keep coming. Leslie Horn writes that the decline also hit Demand Media in the wallet. The company's stock fell to an all-time low of $14.05 per share Tuesday.
  • Tips To Attract Web Site Signups
    Cameron Chapman serves up five tips to increase the number of people signing up for newsletters or information on the site. For starters, Chapman shows us through screen shots and descriptions how to make the call to action obvious. It is too easy for it to blend into the background by making it look identical to other buttons on the page. Pop-ups and freebies are also attention-grabbers.
  • Dale Carnegie's Social Signals
    Lisa Buyer compares Dale Carnegie's 1937 book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" with an SEO's "timeless" quest to gain rank, authority, and popularity through Likes, votes, shares, links and retweets. A heightened focus from Google and Bing to pull in social signals makes it more relevant now than ever before. Buyer presents six ways to win friends and influence search, and provides Carnegie's six keys to success.
  • Crowdsourcing Search-Optimized Content
    Rand Fishkin makes it easy to build great search-optimized content. So he lays out the steps that he believes will provide a competitive advantage. To do this, he crowdsources a series of questions to gain answers, using them to build the process of creating optimized content. This will identify what people like and didn't like in the search engine results pages, and "bolster" it with suggestions provided for improving the content.
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