Internet marketing

Internet marketing

• So how does Google search work?

  • Matt Cutts recently released a video explaining how Google search works.  Admit it; you’ve been a little curious about that, haven’t you?  We admit to it as well. 
    
    Cutts says that there are three keys to being the best search engine in the world:
    1.    Crawl the web comprehensively and deeply
    2.    Index those pages
    3.    And them rank or serve those pages and return the most relevant ones first

    He admits that when Google first started the process of crawling the web and updating results took months.  It is now done on a daily basis.  This has resulted in more timely results. 
    “We used to crawl for 30 days… and then index for about a week and push that data out — and that would take about a week,” Cutts said. “Sometimes you would hit a data center with new data and sometimes you would hit a data center with old data.”

    Once you have crawled the web you then index the pages.  The first step is document selection.  This is the process of finding the pages that have all of the words in order in your search query.  The next step is to rank them.  Google uses page rank as well as over 200 other metrics to determine the search rank.  The key is to find reputable documents that are also about what the user typed in.

    When a search comes in, the query is sent to hundreds of machines simultaneously which explore their fraction of the web and the machines then return their matches and the results are collated and displayed in a fraction of a second.

    It’s still a marvel to many of us how the whole search engine thing works, but the video did give a glimpse of how it works.

• White House Favors Voluntary Anti-Piracy Efforts; Senate Disagrees

  • White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel , said that voluntary agreements on controlling online piracy and counterfeiting are working.  Senate Judiciary Chariman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) says legislation is still needed.

    The Senate anti-piracy bill and the White House’s Stop Online Piracy Act were shelved in January after persistent and loud protests from the tech community and others.  All voiced concerns over the harmful effects of both bills including impeding free speech as well as stifling creativity overall.

    Espinel pointed to agreements with credit card processors MasterCard and PayPal to not provide payment services to sites that deal in pirated property and a pledge last week by three advertising groups not to place ads on sites offering pirated movies, music or other counterfeited goods.  She also pointed out the global aspects of the problem and hoped for greater international cooperation.  She said that the administration is reaching out to foreign law enforcement officials and asking them to crack down on piracy as well.

    Leahy remains convinced of the need for legislation.  “Voluntary efforts are wonderful and I am hoping the voluntary efforts will give us some confidence for the legislation we need, because ultimately we still need legislation.”

    Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) also believes in the need for legislation, but feels the issue will not be brought up again this year.

    In the meantime, the administration continues to broker deals with companies to voluntarily control online piracy.

• Improving Conversions

  • There are some simple steps you can take to improve conversions.  Really.  And, they begin and end with you, the website owner.

    1.    What is your most crucial piece of information?  What is the ONE thing that is crucial for your customers to understand in order for the sale to take place? 
    Jeff Sexton puts it this way: “If the visitors aren’t convinced of ________________they probably won’t buy from us.”  Put another way, “If they never see our _______page, they won’t understand why we ______, and why that’s so crucial to getting results.”
    This is much like identifying your unique selling proposition (usp) and putting that front and center.

    2.    Why do people come to your website?  Keep in mind that people are task-oriented on the web.  As a general rule, they are either looking to buy something or they are searching for information. 
    So ask yourself what people are coming to your site to do?  If you have a payday loan site for example, a visitor may be in need of a payday loan and are looking to be reassured and talked into buying.  Or, it may be that they are looking for information.  They may not need the loan at that minute, but are aware of the possibility of a future need. 
    It will help you to know both the context (why) as well as the task (what) to have your site performing at peak condition.

    3.    The final step is to combine the first two steps.  Using an insurance lead generator as an example, let’s put to use what we’ve learned.  We’ll use the example of an insurance lead generator sells leads to insurance agents.

    Let’s look at a fictional site that sells auto insurance leads.  They have two main selling points:  exclusive leads and a money back guarantee.  Because this particular industry has had more than its share of bad operators, we’ll go with money back guarantee as the usp.

    People come to the website to gather information about purchasing insurance leads, as well as to outright purchase them.  So who are these people?  Many will be new agents.  New agents buy more leads than agents that are established.  It makes sense.  They want to build their business.

    So, “our visitors will not buy if they are not aware of money back guarantee and commitment to quality leads.”  In order to make this point clear, consider having a drop down box from your “Buy Now” button that clearly explains why you’re the best choice.  Maybe it gives an example using a new agent who’s had success.

    Periodic reviews of your material and its presentation is always time well spent.

• FTC Hires Outside Attorney to Aid in Google Case

  • The Federal Trade commission has hired an outside attorney to help in its investigation of Google.  This is just the third time in the last ten years that they have done so.

    Both previous times were in 2008 and both resulted in further action being taken.  In one case they filed an administrative complaint that prevented an acquisition by Inova Health System Foundation and in the other it sued Cephalon Inc over deals that delayed the introduction of generic drugs.

    The attorney hired for this case is Beth A. Wilkinson, who previously worked for the Justice department and is best known as the federal prosecutor who successfully convicted Timothy McVeigh.  She also served as general counsel at Fannie Mae.  She’s in private practice now.

    Her hiring does not mean that the Feds have decided to take Google to court, but it does indicate that they are serious about reviewing the possibility.

    Specifically, the FTC is researching whether Google manipulates its search formula to ensure that its own services rank at the top of search results.

    FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says he believes the agency has the authority to bring a “pure Section 5” case against a company.  The FTC would only have to show that a company engaged in “unfair methods of competition” and not necessarily prove that the behavior harms consumers.

    This is key because most of Google’s services are free;  thus, it is hard to prove that consumers were “hurt.”

    If the FTC follows through with the investigation it holds potentially disastrous consequences for Google.  Look at how an FTC investigation affected Microsoft in the last decade.  It drained them of financial resources and is credited with the loss of talent resources as well.

• Bing Besting Google in Social Search Results?

  • Microsoft has redesigned the bing search results page (which much advertising spending to accompany it) including the addition of a sidebar that shows all your contacts and activity on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. 
    At the beginning of the year Google took a little heat (not from the general public, because they are more popular than ever; but mostly from industry insiders) for incorporating Google+ into search results.  Google does not include Facebook and Twitter because they did not reach agreement with those two social networks to use their data.  Microsoft did.

    Google made a big splash with “Search plus your World” and explained how they thought it would revolutionize search, by making it exponentially more relevant.  More personally relevant.

    So, did Microsoft just trump Google at the social search game?

    Microsoft is not including social results into its main search results, but will keep them separate.  It will include a real time activity feed on the various networks and will suggest contacts who might be able to help you with a particular search.  For example, if you search for Disneyworld, you’ll see a link to a friend who posted pictures from there recently.

    But it doesn’t stop there.  Bing will also recommend “experts” based on their feeds and postings that are related to your search.

    Later this summer bing is adding LinkedIn, Foursquare and Skype to search column.

    There’s more.  Bing is separating the “core search results” from links to its own services like bing maps or reviews.  These results appear in a third column called Sidebar.

    Check it out.  At first glance, this appears to be a well thought out search page with prominent, but separate social results.

    Did Microsoft beat Google at the search game?  You decide.  One thing we know is that you still have to deliver search results that give the user what they are looking for.

• 4 Easy Steps to Improve Your Landing Pages

  • 1.    Add testimonials, awards, social media information and links.  Real testimonials please.  I love the headline, “What our happy customers are saying about Us.”  Testimonials are best when they are specific about a part of your business or a specific product.  
    Try a slightly different approach.  Use relevant headlines, article excerpts, etc. that apply to your field.  It helps to make you look like an expert.
    2.    Add style to your buttons.  Change the name of your “buy now” button to “Order Now”, “Submit Now”, “Show Me the Money.”  You get the idea.  And change the shape and color too.
    3.    Clean up Your Page.  With spring here, do a little spring cleaning.  Make your landing pages clean and precise by removing the elements that don’t help you to convert.
    4.    Try different wording on the pages overall.  Not just your buttons, but on the rest of the page as well.  Try different headlines.  As a life-long writer, I give you this piece of advice:
    It is a rare piece of writing that cannot be improved with subsequent reviews.  Make copy reviews and revisions a regular part of your marketing calendars.

• Recruiting more Twitter Followers

  • There are Twitter followers and there are engaged followers.  You can try to attract the largest number of followers possible, or you can try to recruit engaged followers who become part of your twitter process.  Let’s concentrate on gathering the latter.
    Rich Brooks and SocialMediaExaminer offer four steps to recruiting engaged followers to your twitter page.

    Begin with a strong profile.  With twitter more than other social media networks people will explore your profile before following you.  A strong profile includes a photo and a detailed, yet creative bio.  Don’t up-chuck your resume.  Tell a funny, compelling story, less than 160 characters of course, and people will be intrigued.

    Once your profile is complete it’s time to look for persons for you to follow.  Try Twellow and WeFollow as tools to find them.  You can search by industry or keywords.  You can also check other people’s followers.  If people make their lists public you can subscribe to them thereby gaining quick access to hundreds of users.  And of course, feel free to use twitter’s search tool.

    Tweet Stuff of Interest. It’s not as hard as you think.  Use Google alerts to get daily e-mails of items that would be of interest to your audience.  Share photos and videos.

    Insert Yourself into Other’s Conversations. When you see a conversation going on that you have something of interest to add, look for the right moment to join in, and do it!

    And finally Promote your account through your website, blog and via e-mail.  You can also add a “follow me on twitter” tag to all of your electronic communications. 

• Become the best Blogger in your Neighborhood

  • In the position of copywriter at T3Leads I come across a lot of postings on making your posts, content, blog, website…..better.  We try to share the best of those with you.  This is definitely one of the best.  I like it because Michael Stelzner asks you to rethink your approach to blogging, which is often the best way to improve at something.

    From the April 10th post on Social Media Examiner, here are highlights from the article.

    Before you do anything, rethink your definition of a blog.  He chose the phrase “online magazine.”  He said, “when you start thinking of your blog as a publication, then you can start calling yourself a publisher.  When you’re a publisher, your business and editorial decisions become clearer.”
    I read that and immediately began to look at the job of blogging in a different way.  And, in a positive way I might add.

    1.     As with so many tasks in the marketing profession, the process begins with determining the needs and interests of your audience.  When you know those things you begin to develop material that they want to share.  And you know what that means…social sharing!  And that means improved search engine rankings.
    To know what your readers want to read ask them with a simple survey.  Stelzner recommends SurveyMonkey.  Then ask your readers to complete it. 
    When the survey is done, you can post the results.  Bam, another post idea.

    2.     Use hot topics to create material.  For example in the payday loan and insurance businesses the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) is hot news.  Find an angle, do your homework and write a piece about that.  Always have an eye on news sites to help you with this project.

    3.    Use Multiple Authors.  The largest blogs have multiple authors contributing to its content.  This helps in many ways.  First, when they publish on your site, they will share, thus attracting more consumers to your site.  Second, your site takes on a more-authoritarian feel because of the variety of people involved.  Third, in most cases if a writer agrees to write for you, they will ask you to guest blog on their site, which exposes you to a new audience.  And finally, guest bloggers lend a fresh voice with a different perspective to your site.

    4.    Integrate social sharing.  As we say in every third post, make sure social sharing buttons are present and that you are encouraging readers to share.

    5.    Capture e-mails.  I love the following piece of advice, because it’s exposed me to information that I did not think about.  E-mail is a powerful tool for your website because the majority of visitors will not return.  According to Google Analytics the majority of people who visit your site will NEVER return.  Capture the e-mail addresses with e-mail sign up forms.  It will help you develop a loyal customer base and open an avenue of communication with someone who otherwise you would never be able to capture.

    Remember, from now on, you’re a publisher; not a blogger.  Bloggers spew a bunch of stuff; publishers develop content that is useful to their market.

• Building a Content Marketing Strategy

  • So for your blog, you need some videos and some articles with keywords and text anchoring and some…
    What you need is a plan.  The question is how do I develop it?   Luckily Krista Neher published just such a how-to in ClickZ and we’re bringing it to you.

    1.    What do you want to achieve with your content marketing?  Yes, the overall goal is to drive sales, but other goals include SEO and customer education (real education, not keywords wrapped up in education) for instance.  The more specifically you identify your goals, the better your content will end up being.

    2.    Identify your customer personas/target market.  Who is coming to your site? What kind of life do they live?  How should you communicate with them?

    3.    Identify the “triggers” that send users to your site.  What is driving users to your site?  What frame of mind are they in?  Knowing these triggers is imperative to good and ultimately effective writing.

    4.    What content should you create?  Your next step after you have completed the first three is: ask yourself what avenue is the best way to deliver the message(s) I need to deliver?  Would that best be achieved by a short, compelling video (as a former TV commercial producer, no boring video is the solution to any challenge) or maybe a longer form white paper.  Always keep in mind your objective when developing a piece of content; it will act a guide to the right media.

    5.    Make it more creative.  “Fine,” you say, “but how?”  Let us help you.  You are the owner of a payday loan affiliate site and you have discovered through your analytics that the keywords “emergency loan” have been searched.  The key word there of course is emergency.  You’ll want to develop content that addresses financial emergencies such as medical, a child breaking an arm perhaps, and auto-related emergencies, as well as other types of emergencies you can come up with. 
    Then brainstorm with a friend or colleague for ways to present the information.  Maybe you could do some research into different types of emergencies and how people are affected. 
    Look for ways to interject comedic touches without offending. 
    We also offered the following tips in a previous post.  Please read again and take advantage of all ideas to help improve your content.

    6.     PROMOTE IT!:  Social media, guest blogging, sharing, etc.  Do everything in your power to get the word out about how great your material is.

    7.     Repeat.

• 13 Tips to Sharpen Your Website

  • We’re affiliate online lead generation professionals.  Our websites are our livelihood.  As a result we seem to be in a constant state of revising our sites or developing new ones.  The following article is designed as resource to help make your sites better, no matter whether you are re-designing or just revising.

    As Barry from Feldman Creative puts it…”Dull Won’t Work.”  Not with pencils and certainly not with ideas.  Within seconds, a user not only judges your site for helpful and appealing design, they will decide if your site meets their needs.  You better be ready for them.

    1.    Do Your Homework:  Study what your competition is doing; who are the big dogs leading in your keywords?  What can you learn from them?  Don’t steal.  Make it your own.  Besides, it does no good to steal it, as any kind of marketing requires that you put your own personal spin on it.  But don’t stop with your competitors.  You can learn a lot by studying other successful, unrelated sites that you like.  Navigation, style of design, copywriting, etc.  You can learn a lot about these things by going to sites you like, regardless of the industry.

    2.    Know who’s coming to dinner.  Know who your customer is.  Know what are they looking for when they come to your site.

    3.    Keep your system manageable.  To make changes easily, a CMS such as WordPress will make your life easier when you go to make revisions.

    4, 5.  Easy navigation.  Don’t reinvent website layout.  It not only does not play well with search engine rankings, but customers have come to expect certain information to be in certain locations on websites.  For the greatest conversions possible, put the info where it they expect to find it.

    6. Create Magnetic Content.  Yes.  Feldman also says the following: “Content is your site’s reason for being.”  I will respectfully disagree.  Helping your customer by using all of the tools at your disposal (images, video, good writing, quotes, guest bloggers, white papers, etc) is your site’s reason for being.  I think it’s the difference between designing a site for Google vs. one designed for your customers.  I am of the opinion the customer experience comes first.  Just imagine if Amazon had a 700 page article for every product.

    7.  It’s not all about you.  Write for your customer.  They want to know how your site will help them.  Remove as many “I’s”, “me’s”, and “we’s” as you can.  Think of “you’s.”

    8.  “Publish and Push.”  After publishing content, tell your customers about it with your RSS feed.  Do your best to make sure social media is aware of your story and they share it.
    8a. Have a forum for customers to replay to your content.

    9. Make sure website is mobile ready.

    10.  Get rid of flash.  It might work for some games, but if you’re trying to get today’s consumer to first, become engaged by, then second, purchase from you, your site needs to load fast.

    11. Follow the “F”.  Feldman cites a study that says that users follow an “F” shaped pattern when going to any of your pages.  Think about it.  Top navigation bar; side navigation bar.  Important stuff at the top and along the left side.  Design with that in mind.

    12.  Trust the Pros.  If someone offers to write for you for five bucks an article…that’s probably what it will be worth.  Pay for and trust talented people.  Yourself included of course.

    13.  Use your metrics to constantly improve your site.  As your site ages, it becomes additionally important to review what pages are working and what ones are not.  Which ones have bad links.  Which pages are attracting visitors to your site?

    A final recommendation.  Make a plan and checklist.  It’s so easy to put off and never complete website revisions (building the site from scratch is usually the easy part; tons of motivation.)  Keep yourself motivated.  Plan rewards for yourself when you complete certain parts of your revisions.  It’s sounds elementary, but it works.  Good luck!

• SEO Stats that Will Knock Your Socks Off!

  • Eric Siu gathered the following statistics for an article in SearchEngineJournal.  We found them so interesting we just had to share.  
    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/
    Eric uses these statistics as a case for SEO’s and why they are necessary in today’s marketing world. 
    I recommend reading them with a blank slate – luckily my brain comes up relatively empty most of the time.  Rather than using the statistics to prove something you already believe, see if any of the stats reveal something new about the web and internet marketing.  Then ask yourself how you can use this information to improve your site(s).
        70% of the links search users click on are organic.
        70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results.
        75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
        Search and e-mail are the top two internet activities.
        Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages. And companies with more indexed pages     get far more leads.
        81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses.
        A study by Outbrain shows that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
        SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
        For Google, a study from Slingshot SEO shows 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.
        In that same study, tests for Bing show the following: 9.7% of organic clicks go to #1, 5.5% of organic clicks go to #2, and 2.7% of organic clicks go to #3.
        79% of search engine users say they always/frequently click on the natural search results. In contrast, 80% of search engine users say they occasionally/rarely/never click on the sponsored search results. Here’s a look at what the natural (blue) and sponsored search results (red) look like:

    Search
        Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
        93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
        MarketingCharts reports that over 39% of customers come from search
        The search engine industry is estimated to be worth more than $16 billion.
        There are over 100 billion global searches being conducted each month.
        88.1% of US internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.
        Search directly drove 25% of all online U.s. device purchases in 2010.
        82.6% of internet users use search.

    Mobile
        Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up from 97.3 million in 2011.
        Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012

    References:
        Google/ Hubspot / eConsultancy / MarketingSherpa / SEMPO / Slingshot SEO

• Link Building Tools: Free and Paid

  •  So you want to drive webmasters back to your site?  SearchEngineJournal.com and Sujan Patel collected the following link building tools.

    1.    Majestic SEO:  It’s a website browser that lets you see what sites are linking to your competitor’s pages.  It offers a free report so you can see what sites are still linking back to your own sites as well.

    2.    Open Site Explorer: This tool from SEOMoz offers a few more insights than Majestic, including studying your competitor’s use of links, linking domains and anchor text – all of which aid in your link building efforts.  In the paid version there are social media reports that include facebook, Google+ and twitter.

    3.    Raven Tools: For $100 a month you can research potential link partners, obtain webmaster contact information and send standard link request messages.

    4.    Ahrefs: Chuck Price writing for Search Engine Journal, calls this tool “the best link building tool you’ve ever heard of.”  It’s backlink analysis tool provides an almost infinite amount of information about a site’s inbound links including each link’s ALR rating (the estimated number of visitors following each link per month).  The ability to prioritize links is crucial.

    5.    Competitive Landscape Analyzer:  More than a tool to research links, you helps you determine why you may have lost rank in the SERP’s.  This could be huge.  Plans start at $199 per month.

    6.    SEOMoz Pro: Similar to Raven Tools and Ahrefs.  Give them a test drive and see which one is right for you.

    7.    MozBar:  A free Firefox and Chrome extension that automatically displays important link information including a toolbar that highlights “no-follow” versus “follow” links, internal and external links, and important link-building information of yours and your competitor.

    8.    Ontolo:  Similar to Raven Tools and Competitive Landscape Analyzer with a few extra features including automated link prospecting and competitor link analyzing.  It ultimately is a time saver.

    9.    Tout: This is an e-mail management program that extracts contact information from websites, automatically creating e-mail messages and copy in template message texts, all with the click of a single button.  Another time saver.

    10.    Buzz Stream:  A much less expensive Raven Tools with prices beginning at $30 per month.

    11.    Who Links to Me:  A reporting service that provide3s analytics detailing all of a site’s backlinks.

    12.    Wordtracker’s Link Builder: This is a new product that offers the ability to identify link prospects quickly and to sort them into relevant categories.  Monthly prices begina t $69 a month.

    Check them out and see for yourself which tools are best for you.  The good news is several of the tools are free or have free applications.

• Which states Love the new iPad?

  • The opening weekend sales for the newest iPads were three million strong and we can probably conclude a few million more have been sold since then.  Online advertising network Chitika has tracked the U.S. states where the new iPads are being activated and they have released some interesting demographic information.

    The answer is mostly coastal states.  According to the report the top five areas of activation were California, Washington D.C., Hawaii, Nevada and Washington state.  These states also rank high in income levels.  In fact, coastal states average income 10% higher than their inland neighbors.

    The report basically uses the above average income to explain why the first-buyers come from these states.  They ignore the fact that all of those states are also tech centers.  Seattle > Washington state.  San Fran, L.A.> California.  Washington D.C. is well, D.C.  Hawaii and Nevada are also growing tech centers, or trying to be.

    It’s fair to say that if you combine some extra cash with a little tech savvy, you’ll find a center that is strong for Apple.

• Google+ gets a Makeover

  • Why is it when I look at a Google designed product that I feel ten years younger?  This is not meant to be a compliment.  Other than their logo, everything always feels like it was designed ten years ago.  The Google+ resdesign is no exception.

    That’s the bad.  Now for the good.  It’s a clean presentation.  I know where to look and I think I know where to go to do what I want to do.  Since one of the major goals for the redesign was to make it easier on the eyes, you would have to declare it a success.

    Onto the specifics.  The tool bar has moved to a vertical format to the left hand side of the page from the horizontal top side. 
    The toolbar is also customizable.  You can change the order of your icons, you can remove those icons you don’t use and you can add icons from the “More” group.

    Photos and videos that you post will now be full-bleed; undoubtedly a move that is designed to entice more comments and sharing.  But, admittedly it also enhances the page look.

    A new “Hangouts” page has also been created where you will find all of your invitations find popular hangouts and access any public or live hangout. 
    There is a new column that shows trending stories on Google+, as well as a new chat list that shows potential chat buddies.

    There’s no  question, at least for anyone who doesn’t directly derive an income from Google, that changes were necessary for the social platform.  Will these be enough to increase the monthly engagement time of three minutes per month?  Time will tell.

• Google Adds Zip Code Targeting and Location Insertion to AdWords

  • In response to customer feedback Google announced this week the addition of 30,000 zip codes to AdWords allowing the advertiser to find and target users by location.  The location insertion feature lets advertisers with multiple locations to create one ad and AdWords will then insert the local city, name, postal code and phone number when the ad is displayed.

    Location insertion will work even if other extensions, such as sitelinks, take precedence over location extensions.

    For zip code targeting advertisers will be able to add up to 1,000 zip codes at a time.  They will also have the ability to view campaign performance by zip code.

    There are additional tweaks coming on the Google Display Network which are targeted to companies in the travel industry.

• The Keys to Better Web Writing

  • We’re learning that Google wants quality content.  Not so spam-y, not so sales-y; in short, quality content that educates and helps your website visitor.  This is terrific and it’s a goal worth pursuing.  But, we still have to convert.  We still have to persuade.  And we have to present an offer to our visitors that they can’t refuse.

    You do this by providing something of value, making an offer and conducting a call to action.

    We’ll use payday sites to illustrate.  What is the “thing of value” that these sites offer?  Yes, payday loans, but fast payday loans, ease of application, maybe percentage of those approved.  These points need to be communicated quickly and clearly to the first time visitor.

    The offer.  “Payday loans with instant approval.”  A simple, concise message that highlights your best selling point.  How will the visitor’s life improve by buying your product or service?
    What’s the best way to illustrate it? Sometimes, a simple headline with a photo or illustration will do the trick.  Other times video is a perfect way to illustrate your offer.

    Show the consumer how your service will make their life easier.  “Hassles eliminated”; “The cash you need”; visuals with happy faces.  It’s imperative to brainstorm for the best ways to communicate your offer so the first time visitor will choose you over your competitors.

    Your call to action.  For most payday affiliate marketers it’s as simple as the “apply here” box.  Never put your call to action too far away from the action.  It should be at the top and bottom of each page.

    Good writing often comes down to planning.  Plan each page of your site, then brainstorm and test your ideas to see which ones give the highest conversion rates.

• Finding and Following Companies on LinkedIn

  • Finding and following companies on LinkedIn is easier than ever.  A new follow button for companies allows users to connect with a business or organization with just one click.  Facebook and twitter have had this capability for a while.

    Now you find and follow an organization in one of four ways:  First, when not browsing LinkedIn hit the LinkedIn “Following” tab on a company’s website.  When you’re on LinkedIn from the navigation bar click Companies>Search Companies.  You can also type a company name in the Search box.  From there you can click “Follow Company” directly in the search results.  And of course you can follow a company from their LinkedIn page.

    Beginning in April, companies can now access follower statistics and issue targeted updates, which will allow companies to send targeted messages to segmented persons.    LinkedIn describes it:
    “They (marketers) will be able to create hyper-focused follower lists – based on several targeting criteria, including Industry, Seniority, Job Function, Company Size, Non-company Employees, and Geography – to which they can deliver highly relevant content to increase engagement.”

    The new follower statistics will show a company’s likes, comments, engagement percentages and some demographic information.

    LinkedIn also released some statistics about its users and their thoughts:
    •    70% of LinkedIn members follow, or would follow companies on LinkedIn
    •    47% of followers think LinkedIn is a “more” appropriate social enviromnment for hearing company news and updates.
    •    63% of LinkedIn members expect companies to have a presence on LinkedIn

    Did you read that??  LinkedIn members expect companies to have a presence on LinkedIn!

    Thanks to MarketingLand for the source material for this article. 
    http://marketingland.com/linkedin-launches-targeted-updates-follower-statistics-9699

• Everything you wanted to know About Social Media Marketing but were Afraid to ask

  • Social Media Examiner published the results of a recent study of 3,800 marketers regarding the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing (SMM) in 2012.  Here are some of their findings.  Keep in mind this is not about consumer use, but business marketing.

    1.    WHO: Geographically 57% hail from the US, followed by Canada and the UK at 9% each, and Australia at 5%.  A substantial 94% of marketers said they use social media marketing, with 83% saying it was important to their business.  51% of the respondents were B2B and 49% B2C.

    2.    WHAT: In addition to social media marketing, the respondents are taking advantage of e-mail marketing, SEO and event marketing (speaking and networking.)  55% are doing press releases, 38% are doing inline ads (Google Adwords), 17% are doing radio ads and 10% are doing television ads, to name a few of the traditional media.

    3.     WHERE: 92% are doing facebook and 82% are doing twitter.  57% are doing YouTube and the channel also got the top spot for the place where marketers are going to spend more of their time.  In addition to YouTube, marketers plan to use twitter more frequently, 68% plan to blog more and 66% plan to use LinkedIn more often.

    4.    WHEN: Younger marketers spend more time on social media; no surprise there.  The big surprise is that those with over three years’ experience with social media spend over 20 hours a week on social.  Suffice to say that the survey found a number of people whose title is social media marketer.

    5.    WHY:  Most (85%) companies use social for the increased exposure, followed by 65% who report increased traffic.  Other reported benefits include improved search engine rankings, improved sales and the opportunity to grow business partnerships.

    This is just a smidgen of the information that you will find in the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Stelzner.

• The Latest on Content Marketing

  • Outbrain.com, a blog advocacy/publicity firm, recently published results from its report “The State of Content Marketing, 2012”
    The following are the results from a survey of senior-level brand managers and agency executives.

    Everyone questioned said they utilize content marketing in their marketing mix.  87% of those said that video is preferred form of content.  Written content, such as blog posts (67%) and articles (44%), also has a place in content marketing strategies. Other visual mediums such as slideshows and photo galleries are used by 44% of respondents.

    Social Media is the most popular channel for driving traffic to content with 96% of respondents using a social channel.  Paid search, display advertising and SEO are other methods.

    The study shows that content marketing is not being used so much as a search engine tool, but is being used as a way to engage consumers with their product/service.  The study explains it like this:  “Marketers employ content marketing efforts to drive brand awareness and target top of purchase funnel consumers rather than for generating direct leads or sales. Social media engagement is the most popular indicator marketers consider when measuring the success of content marketing efforts (89%), followed by views or content downloads (76%).”

    When it comes to brand awareness social media was the preferred method, with video advertising, content marketing and SEO following.

    More than anything this study shows just how much the modern world of marketing is constantly and quickly changing.  Whether you are a national brand manager or an insurance affiliate marketer, staying on top of trends is essential to successful marketing.

• How to Write a Better Subject Line

  • If you do e-mail marketing, you know how important the subject line is.  If you don’t, that’s ok.  As you read this article think of applying these tips when you’re writing titles for articles.  You might be surprised how similar the skills are. 
    1.    Be Your Customer:  What are they thinking?  We usually try to “sell” in everything we write.  That’s natural, but the subject line is an enticement.  You are trying to get the reader to open the e-mail; the selling should be in the e-mail, not in the subject line.  Your subject line should tell the reader “what’s in it for them” to open the e-mail.
    2.    Use Snippets:  Some e-mail companies use your first few lines of text and place them next to the subject line or in the subject line.  Think of these as subject line extensions and use them wisely.
    3.    Don’t worry about Spam Filters:  Just write your best subject line.  Article titles can be looked at in a similar way.  You don’t have to place keywords in your titles in every article.  The world will not stop if you write a clever headline now and then that doesn’t have a keyword in it.  But rather, is one that does its job as an enticer to get the reader to actually read the article.

• “Personas”: 2012 Word for Target Market

  • I am the old school marketing guy for T3Leads and always get a kick out of modern re-naming of a particular marketing term or other that was perfectly adept at its job; in this case the old term is “target market” and the new one is “personas.”  By the way, I understand that my generation probably did the same thing.

    According to Wikipedia, personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude, and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. Personas consider the goals, desires, and limitations of buyers.  We used to call that demographics with a little psychographics thrown in.

    The point is that personas/target markets are imperatives in any effective affiliate marketing strategies. 
    So with the help of Stephanie Miller and clickz here are the steps to building a great persona program:
    1.    Create your profile parameters.  What information do you want to learn about your customers?  Age, sex, race, job, location, etc.  Additionally what do you want to learn about how they live their lives?  Attitudes, ideology, interests, etc.
    2.    Gather data about your customers.  Almost any data mining you can do will be helpful.  Keep data on actual customers separate from site visitors who did not convert.  You may discover very clear differences between the types of people who are buying your product/service and those who are not.  You can gather the data from your own files as well as from Google Analytics or other such tool.
    3.    Create pictures of your personas.  You may have 4 or 5 main customer photos and another 4 or 5 of those that do not convert.
    4.    Try to make each persona unique.  Beyond maybe sex and age, try not to overlap personality traits.  Each persona should be unique.

    Once you have created your business personas, it is likely that you will learn a great deal about your customers, and probably even dispel a misconception or two.  Beyond that, the process will help you to create better content because you will have an actual image in mind when you write.

• Keyword Research Shortcuts

  • Aleh Barysevich offers the following checklist of shortcuts to keyword research.
    1.     Determine what keywords you already rank for by checking your search engine analytics tool. 
    2.    Go to Google Analytics for keyword ideas.  It is recommended that you go to Traffic Sources>Overview>Keyword>view full report.  Then export the file to Excel or make a pdf.
    3.    A popular way to gather keywords for your site is to check the keywords of your competitors.  You can do this by checking the meta descriptions of their websites’ pages.  Chances are there are different keywords on different pages.  It’s worth a look.  You can also apply shortcut number 1 to check for the keywords.  
    4.    When you have a list of the predominate keywords use Google Adwords Tool to expand your list. 
    5.    Break your keywords into Groups.  Divide them into columns of regular and long-tail keywords.  Then divide horizontally by non-branded and branded keywords.  Branded being those with your name attached in some way.
    6.    The final step is to create another file with keywords listed vertically and your website pages listed horizontally along the top.  This will show you exactly what keywords your pages rank for.
    New methods of conducting keyword research often lead to new ways to look at your website’s data.  It is well worth the effort.

• Does E-Mail Marketing Still Work? YES

  • The easy and most accurate answer is yes.  Many people have written the obituary of e-mail marketing, but we believe that to be premature.  These days everyone has sounded the death knell of newspaper and magazine advertising, and admittedly they are not what they once were, they still work for a number of business verticals.
    Add e-mail to the list of media delivery systems that has been prematurely labeled dead.

    The Inbox:  Yes, people are weary of spam, yes they are getting fewer e-mails than a couple of years ago, and yes, they delete many before looking at them, but there’s a flip side.
    Consider your own in-box.  You certainly read and keep some of your e-mails.  Why?  Because they deliver something of value.  Maybe it’s a newsletter or one of your favorite business’ with a discount offer.  Whatever the reason, there are still some e-mail communications that you check.  That’s the way many people handle their e-mail these days.  They keep what they want and delete the rest.  The people who retain your e-mails are actively involved with your company, product or service.  This is great news.  Just like with your website content, take the opportunity to create e-mail content that your consumers will instantly recognize as valuable.

    “I do social now; no e-mail”: Yes, we all understand the need for social media communication.  This does not preclude the need for effective e-mail marketing.  In fact, I think we can agree that social media, although effective, is more than a little loud and crowded.  This presents an opportunity for your e-mail message.  Your e-mail, unlike your social media posts has the undivided attention of your reader for a split second.  This is long enough to grab their attention and lead them to action.

    “My target market is young.  They don’t do e-mail”:  Yes, they do.  Not necessarily in the same numbers as older computer users, but they do, particularly as they enter the workforce.  Yes, you will find younger consumers on social media websites more than you will find them doing e-mail, but if your e-mail program is well designed, you can capture the younger generation’s undivided attention.

    E-mail marketing is not dead, it’s simply evolving, and it’s smart to keep in mind that it has inherent advantages that are worth the effort.

• Affiliates: Confused by the Latest Google Update?

  • Google unleashed another series of search engine updates at the end of March and many sites were affected (drop in ranking.)  So what’s all the fuss about?  Apparently, if you played the SEO game too well, according to Google, that is in fact, too well.  Let’s try and sort this out.

    Neil Patel on Quicksprout provided seven reasons why your site may have dropped.
    1.     You have too many exact anchor text links.  You should have variations of your keyword anchored in your site.  Think natural.  Does your site look and feel “natural”?  According to AudienceBloom.com exact-match anchor text links should be closer to 5-10%, rather than the prior goal of 40%.

    2.    You don’t have enough semantic keyword anchor text links.   When searching, people will not always use the same keyword in the same way.  For help with finding semantic keywords for your keywords, go to Google AdWords.  You want to develop “latent semantic indexing” (LSI.)  This will help you to link to a variety of keyword usages, which is a positive for your site.

    3.    You don’t have enough ‘junk anchors’:  Sounds bad, but isn’t.  Junk anchors are text links such as “click here,” “read more” and “buy now.”  The natural inclination is to have fewer of them, but Google feels they look “natural” and thus are good to have.  The feeling is that they are necessary in a call to action, so should be present.  Even if you are simply linking to a resource such as an article or website, a “click here” text link will help you in the rankings.

    4.    You don’t have enough brand mention in your text links.  If you mention your company name in a blogpost, you should link back to your homepage.

    5.    You don’t have enough social signals.  You need to increase your “shares” in social media.  It seems this update thinks (probably rightly so) that the more shares you have, the better the content.  So make sure your share buttons are in a conspicuous place; use a plugin such as “scrolling social sidebar” for ease of installation. 
    Other ways to increase social engagement include asking readers to share content and connect with social influencers.  Check out “triberr.com” also for increases social shares.

    6.    Don’t buy links.  You may get away with this practice for awhile, but probably not forever.  At the very least know what inbound links you bought, so they can be deleted easily.

    7.    You use link exhanges.  All three major search engines frown upon this, but are beginning to pay more attention to it.  As in the example above, you may get away with it for awhile, but…

    Overall, what Google seems to be saying with each Panda update is to create a website that is consumer friendly – easy to navigate and helpful – but do so in an organic way.  We’ll keep perusing the internet for helpfulinformation in an effort to aid you in your quest to become more successful affiliate marketers.

• Tips for designing your new Facebook Brand Page

  • So the new facebook brand pages are here whether you want them or not.  So it’s best to become familiar with and to take advantage of the new features. 
    1.     Upload a Great Photo:  Make it sexy, make it a picture people will want to look at.  The new pages are very visual; use them to your advantage.
    2.    Add Milestones to Company Pages: Adding key dates helps visitors learn more about you.  It creates a sense of history that is appealing to many visitors.  If you are an affiliate marketer, publish photos from previous conferences or even photos of yourself in a recreational activity, so visitors can learn about you too.
    3.    Post Once a Week:  Schedule a time.  The writing staff at T3 has just started doing this and you will see improved and more regular social activity as a result. 
    4.    Arrange Your Page: You can arrange photos and custom apps at the top of the page.  This helps visitors to locate key locations on your page.  Events or videos for example that you want visitors to see.  Great way to prioritize your site.
    5.    Manage Your Page with Admin Panel:  Your brand page will be easier to manage with the new Admin Panel.  Track activity, respond and view real-time Facebook insights.

• Facebook Analytics…oops, Insights

  • As Facebook evolves into an advertising platform with greater targeting capabilities, and therefore of greater use to affiliate marketers, their tools and the data they provide, become increasingly important.  That tool is Facebook Insights.

    Some of the metrics are available on your Facebook page.  Click on the “See All” Insights link on the Admin panel of the brand timeline page.  The “People Talking About” metric tells you how many people have liked, commented on or shared particular posts.

    Additional metrics are available by accessing Insights by clicking on the “Export” button in the top right hand corner of the overview screen.  When you export the data some fifty additional metrics are available to you.  Included is the organic reach per post, including a graph of a given time span allowing to see visually what posts were the most popular.

    A favorite of mine if only for the name is the “engagements per engaged user” metric.  No kidding, that’s the name.  An engaged user is defined as someone who has liked, shared or commented on a post.  These are the people who are making posts “go viral.”  The people most likely to share your information.  It’s important to know what posts they reacted to.  This metric does that.

    The tools are useful because they show graphically over a 28-day period how you’re doing. It will help you plan topics for future blog posts and for social topics as well.

• Engaging Your Target Market on Social Media

  • New research shows an ever-evolving social media landscape with various groups using it in different ways.  Do you know how to find your target markets?

    1.    Know where your market is online.  Recent studies show that users (that’s about 90% of all U.S. internet users) spend 16% to 25% of their online time, on social networks.  The remainder of the time they are on entertainment, news, retail, community or games sites.  They are also interacting with e-mail.  Further, it is estimated that the average internet user spends over 8 hours per month on social media.

    2.    Find the content that will be of interest to your target market.  Adults aged 18-34 are far more likely to watch videos or television while engaging with social media at the same time.  A recent study by Nielsen showed that 44% of mobile users visit social sites while watching TV.  A whopping 57% check their e-mail.  These numbers are almost identical for the commercial break as well.  Facebook and YouTube are the top two sites for this practice, with Zynga coming up third.

    3.    Facebook commands consumers of all kinds in far greater numbers and for greater lengths of time than any of the competition.  Facebook gets 14.6% of internet user’s time compared to 2% for all other sites.  Yes, Pinterest and Twitter have shown growth and warrant attention, but Facebook is the place to engage consumers when you want to engage them on a social platform.

    4.    Video is Important.  100 million video are watched per day in America.  Most of those are primarily on YouTube.  Your customers are often watching video and in fact you could make the case that they are addicted to it.  Look for sites where video is a big part and you’ll find your target market.

    5.    Mobile is a big deal and getting bigger.  More and more transactions are originating from here.  Keep your content shorter and easier to consume when creating for mobile.
    Social is not just changing Google search rankings, it is changing the way we live.  Have mobile in mind when you create content for your site.

• Using Video to get on Google Page 1

  • Having video on your site is great, but posting alone will not help you get on page 1.  The good news is though, that there are things you can do.  Thanks to Neil Patel here are some tips.
    1.    Upload your video(s) to YouTube.  This won’t guarantee traffic to your site (because traffic will go to your YouTube page) but it will be successful in getting Google to index your video.  Create a YouTube channel if you have not already done so.
    2.    Embed the videos on your site.  Viewings on your site will be counted toward your YouTube viewer totals.
    2a.  Put text on those pages.  Add an introduction to the video and offer a transcript.  There are services such as SpeechPad that transcribe your videos.
    3.     Create a video sitemap to make sure that Google recognizes your videos.  You can do this with Google webmaster tools.  Your video title is the most important feature.  It’s easier to rank for long tail keywords, so focus on them.
    4.    Build backlinks to your video. 

    
    There is no question that having video on your site will help you to rank better in search engines.  But it’s what you do after that may help you to get to page one.

• Shout Out Your Best Blogs

  • You’ve written great blog postings; several in fact, but nobody knows about them.  With the help of Corey Eridon and HubSpot.com here are some ways to get out the word how great they were and…are.
    1.    Recommend other blog posts you’ve written.  At the bottom of each post list and link articles that are similar in topic to the one you’ve just posted.
    2.    Republish blog posts using social media. 
    3.    Work to get other people, particularly those of importance in the industry, to acknowledge and link to your previous posts
    4.    Update and republish old blog posts – This serves two purposes.  First, on days when you have no ideas as to what to write, updating an old post is a good way to end writer’s block.  Second, updating your old posts is a smart thing to do.  Don’t be afraid to add graphics and photos to the new post.  Remember when you do this, to do steps 1 and 2.  Make sure you link to older articles and to let everyone know you have updated a post via social.
    5.    Link to your articles (only if appropriate and if not articles than to your website) when you post comments to another.  It is also recommended that you check Q&A forums such as LinkedIn Answers or Quora.  See if people are asking questions about topics you have previously written about.

    The job of SEO is never ending.  That’s certainly something you have figured out if you’ve been in this business for a little while.  Hopefully this article provides helpful tips to save you time and improve traffic to your site.

• “Do Not Track”: Does it mean the same to Everyone?

  • The Federal Trade Commission first proposed a “Do Not Track” button in 2010.  FTC Chairman Jon Leobowitz urged web companies to voluntarily set up a system for users to opt out of online tracking, and threatened legislation if they failed to act.

    Since then the Obama administration and industry leaders have reached an agreement to install such a button.   It was announced as the “Privacy Bill of Rights” by the White House and is comprised of a set of principles that companies agreed to handle users’ personal data.  All of the major web browsers agreed to the button, and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), a coalition of advertising trade groups, said that by the end of the year they would stop displaying ads to users who had chosen the the “Do Not Track” button.

    But, Mike Zaneis, general counsel of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, who is a member of the DAA said that “Do not track” is a “complete misnomer.”  “Under no program will you have no tracking online.  The Internet requires some level of tracking.”

    He went on to say that the feature is aimed at allowing consumers to curtail the data that third-parties can collect about them.  Websites such as Amazon, Facebook and millions of other sites that users interact with directly, would still be able track users’ activities.

    The FTC seemed to agree.  Mostly.  Ed Felten, the FTC’s chief technologist said the goal of “Do Not Track” is to give consumers choice with online behavioral tracking.”  That seems to align with the industry take on the intent of the agreement.

    Then he added, "An effective ‘Do Not Track’ system should go beyond simply opting consumers out of receiving targeted advertisements; it should opt them out of collection of behavioral data for all purposes other than those that would be consistent with the context of the interaction."

    The Digital Advertising Alliance committed to a plan wherein users who opt for the “do not track” button, would not see targeted ads, but the companies can still “track” for “product development,” “system management” and some other purposes.

    Zaneis said that the Advertising Bureau continues to work on plans for better targeted advertising and admitted that if a majority of customers opted for “Do Not Track” that this would have a very negative impact on the industry.  He says they are working on educating consumers, believing that to be the key for the digital advertising industry.

• Old School Advertising Tips for New School Marketers - Part 2

  • As we pointed out last week, although we like to think we invented marketing, it’s been around almost since the beginning of time.  Several millennia at least.  So let’s go back in time to see how the lessons learned there can help us today.  So, onto Part 2 of Dan Kennedy’s 1990’s lessons applied to today’s marketing environment.

    Free Advertising:  Nothing is free, as in the very least it requires time, but there are ways to promote your business without an outlay of cash.  Back in the 90’s it was through public relations and the use of mass media.  Now it is through social media.  Content marketing and the requisite promotion of it, are great ways to get noticed.  With so many free social media tools available it has probably never been easier, or cheaper, to get your story to the masses.

    Become the “Talk of The Town:” Kennedy in his original book, offered 4 ways to get people talking about you. 
        Gain prestigious recognition:  Get people in the know to talk about you.  This is exactly what we try to do by recruiting bloggers to talk about us and to link our articles on their site. 
        Offer new products/New Services:  Can you re-package your product in such a way that it is different than your competitors?  Even if it’s web content, can you do it better and make it more relevant than the competition?  Can you out-service your competition?  Do you follow up better than other online marketers?  Do you respond to customer concerns faster than anyone else?

    Tie into Trends and News Events: Here’s a perfect example.  As we write this, oral arguments have begun regarding the national healthcare reform law before the Supreme Court.  An insurance site that we are familiar with is developing content in response to the demand for material on this topic.  But they are developing content that other outlets seem to be missing.  Don’t just pile on and create content that everyone is doing. Create your own unique content.

    Tie your business to seasons, holidays, movies and other entertainment events: This process could be as simple as revising a headline and opening paragraph to reflect the time of year, to shooting a video and posting on your YouTube channel.   Let your imagination run wild.

    Manage Your Customer Base: The ability to manage your customer base depends upon your exact affiliate agreement, but the following information may shed light on the process and how easy it is to ignore your customers.  The following numbers show how businesses lose customers.
    1% die.  3% move.  5% switch due to a friend’s recommendation.  9% switch to better products or services.  At some point someone switched to you, so this is an ever changing process.  And finally 14% leave due to general dissatisfaction.  The remainder, 68% leave due to total indifference.  Try not to let that happen to you.

    Fuel Your Own Referrals:  This concept was not invented along with the phrase “going viral.”  In the old days it focused on doing your job better than your competition and making sure people knew about it.  Now, it has more to do with link building; although doing your job better than your competition is still imperative.  Kennedy talks about the “EAR” formula.
        E- Earn Your Referrals: Be the best.  They’ll talk about you.
        A-Ask: Ask for referrals.  In today’s world it means having all the social share buttons in a conspicuous place and asking for people to “like” you and share.
        R-Recognize and Reward: Recognize when people like you and when they share your posts.

    They may have been yesterday’s marketing ideals, but they still apply today.

• The Ultimate On-Page SEO Guide

  • With the help of Search Engine Journal and Alesia Krush we offer the following score card for on-page SEO.

    The following she regards as being of “Utmost Importance:”

    HTTP response code errors: Your site must be hosted on a reliable server

    Keyword in URL: Exact match domains tend to perform extremely well, but most are taken by now.  But the news is not all bad, as it is believed that exact match domains are probably within the sights of Google and a future algorithm which will result in lower rankings.  Try to have one of your keywords in the title and it will go a long way to helping you.

    Keyword in Page Title:  Much easier to do than URL’s, and maybe even more important.  When writing them make them sound as natural as possible.  Not sentences, but think of them as concise bulleted items.  Almost conversational.

    Content Uniqueness: Make the content on your site as original as possible. Copying directly from another site will more than likely result in your pages being ignored.

    Highly Important:

    Site speed.

    Internal links.  Link to your own pages, but do not overdo it.  It should appear natural.

    Keywords in Internal Anchor Texts. Link to your keyword anchor text.  Use different word combinations.  This will look natural (that word again) to the search engine, thereby helping you.

    Keyword in Your H1 Text.

    Content Freshness.  Don’t post every six months.  You know how to do it; regular fresh posts on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

    Content above the fold: Tell your story before the user has to scroll down.

    Very Important:

    Keyword in Image Alt Text: This is the text that appears when your image won’t load.  The presence of a keyword helps alert the SE’s that your page is relevant.

    Content Weight:  If you’re light on content, your ranking will suffer.  As mentioned before make sure you are posting on a regular basis.

    Quite Important:

    Absence of Broken Links.  It’s important to check your site for broken links.  Internet Ninja recently released a free broken link tool that appears to get it right.

    Keyword Frequency and in Bold.  It’s Google, so we don’t know how many times a keyword should appear but it’s more than once certainly.  They also appear to like the keywords in bold or italics.

    Make it visual.  Not all text.  You already know this, but it bears repeating.  Pics and videos please.

    Minimum Importance.
    Perfect HTML code and Valid CSS.  Perfect is not as important as not being sloppy. 
    Keyword in Meta Description.

• Microsoft’s Ad Center Announces Updates

  • David Pann, general manager for Microsoft Advertising’s Search Network, gave notice of improvements coming in the next few months. 
    

    Broad Match Modifier.  This is similar to Google’s Broad Match Modifier, and will allow advertisers to create keywords with greater reach than phrase match and will allow more control than broad match.
    

    Ad Center Express.  This is similar to Google’s AdWords Express and will be aimed at small businesses.  As Pann explained it, “in addition to marketing, too many times small businesses set up campaigns but don’t have time to monitor them closely or tweak them, meaning they often are disappointed by results.”
    “Not only are they running restaurants or plumbing businesses, we’ve told them they need to be search engine marketing experts,” Pann said.
    

    Integrated Ads in Bing.  “We're developing richer kind of ad units that look more like content in context and allow us to help the user to complete a task and engage with an advertiser or merchant. as simply as possible,” said Pann.

    He pointed to the example of the integration with OpenTable.com that will allow restaurant searchers the opportunity to make reservations at a restaurant through the use of OpenTable which will be linked within the search results.
    

    More Detailed Quality Score Data.  Pann says advertisers will soon be able to get data on their quality scores for various match types and for mobile-only targeted ads.
    “We’re giving them much more detailed data so they can improve their performance in the marketplace,” he said.
    

    A Desktop Tool for the Mac.  Yes, Microsoft is developing desktop software to manage adCenter from Macintosh.  Pann admitted that customers were clamoring for such a tool and as a result they are developing one.

• Smartphones near Majority

  • In a report released by Nielsen Media, smartphones are near to overtaking feature phones (mobile phones that are not considered smart phones) in the cell phone race.  In 2011 according to Wikipedia, feature phones made up 60% of the market.

    Nielsen reports that 49.7% of all cell phone users own a smart phone.  One year ago that number was 36%.  It is clear that when people trade in their older phones they are opting for new smart phone models. 
    And the models they are overwhelmingly choosing are iOS and Android.

    Currently, Android based smart phones make up 48% of the market, with iPhone accounting for 32%.  One year ago Android’s share was 40% and iOS 28%.

    But when it comes to smart phones being purchased today, the race is much closer.  Android makes up 48% of smart phone sales, while Apple makes up 43%.  Blackberry is down to 5% and everyone else, including the Windows phone make up just 4% of the market.

    With the announcement this week from Microsoft and Nokia’s that the new Windows phone will sell for $100, one can infer that they want a bigger piece of the pie.  It won’t be impossible certainly, but it is certain to be a major challenge.

    The evidence continues to mount that mobile is not only the future, but very much the present.

• Can Facebook do Search?

  • It began with a posted photograph from Mark Zuckerberg which appeared to have a facsimile of a Facebook page that maybe looked like it had a search bar on it. 
    According to a BusinessWeek report from March 29, 2012, Facebook has about 24 engineers, including a former Google engineer named Lars Rasmussen working on a search engine for the social giant.   Their goal, they say, is to help users sift through material more efficiently.

    24 people is certainly not a threat to Google and its thousands of search engineers and employees.  But, it represents a step in the search direction.  With Google moving from the search arena into the social arena with Google+, it isn’t a surprise that Facebook is at the very least investigating the search market.

    From a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense for Facebook to go into search.  After all, search advertising is still the biggest piece of the online advertising pie.  And Facebook does not have a part of that.
    It’s doubtful that Facebook will go into search the way Google has.  From a very practical standpoint they currently lack the talent to engineer a new search engine of the entire web, but they certainly might be able to create a search engine that exclusively searches the Facebook world.

    For many people, that would be plenty.

• 4 Old School Tips in a New School World

  • We hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but advertising has been around since cave drawings.  We have not invented it. The mediums have changed over the years, but the idea of communicating an idea with precision and driving the “consumer” to action, is not new.  This is good news, because we can look to the past to help us today.
    Sean Platt pieced together some of marketing guru’s Dan Kennedy’s 1991 book and applied it to today’s marketing environment.  Some things just don’t change.

    1.    What’s Your Unique Message?  It used to be called the Unique Selling Proposition.  Kennedy defines it this way:      “When you set out to attract a new, prospective customer to your business for the first time, there is one, paramount question you must answer:
    “Why should I choose your business/product/service versus any/every other competitive option available to me?”
    Be ready to boast about your business and explain as succinctly as possible why they should choose you. 
    This is done best with a combination of image(s) and text.  Unless they’re perfect, a combination of the two works best.

    2.    Deliver Your Message Correctly.  According to Kennedy, the customer takes five mental steps between first contact and the sale:  Awareness of a need or desire, picking the thing that will satisfy that desire, picking the source for that thing, accepting the price, and finding reasons to act immediately.
    Use these as a framework for your landing page design and copy.  Your conversions will improve from the outset.
    Study a good print ad or a good website and you will see these steps being conducted seamlessly before your very eyes.

    3.    Prove Your Case.  The internet has increased our skepticism, not reduced it.  On your site and with blogposts, address objections.  They’re in the reader’s mind, so address them.  Social proof is important.  Tout your fans and followers; it builds credibility.  Use testimonials (real ones – you can smell fake ones from a mile away) to boost your case.  I mentioned images previously, but it bears repeating.  They can help prove your point, as well as communicate an idea.

    4.    Create a Clear, Concise Layout.  Good magazine or newspaper ad layouts attract your attention and so do good web layouts.  Make them clean and above all else, make sure your product and its benefits are clear to the user.

    We will add additional tips in the coming weeks.  Keep an eye out.

• Google Analytics Announces New Social Media Reports

  • Google announced a new set of reports to track social media within Google Analytics.  Google’s goals are as follows:   
    •    Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
    •    Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
    •    Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs
    The new reports include an Overview page, a Conversions report, a Social Sources report and Social Plugins Report.

    Overview Page:  Shows at a glance the total conversion value generated by all of your social channels.  The Social Value visualization compares the number and monetary value of all your goal completions against those that resulted from social referrals - both as last interaction, and assisted.
    

    Conversions Report:  Allows you to measure the value of each individual social channel by showing their conversion rates and the dollars they drive to your business.
    

    Social Sources Report:  Shows engagement and conversion metrics for each social network so you can see how many people are visiting your site overall, compared with how many were driven there by your social channels.  This will be a great help to see exactly how much social media is really driving traffic to your site.
    

    Social Plug-ins:  This will show you the content on your site that people are sharing.

    All of these will be helpful in determining the role of social media in driving traffic to your site.

• ¼ of Paid-Search Clicks will come from Mobile by end of Year

  • In a report just released by Marin Software (“The State of Mobile Search Advertising”) they predict that 25% of Google’s paid-search clicks will come from mobile by December.  In December 2011, mobile made up 12.3% of paid clicks.

    The report also estimates that 23% of ad spending for search will be from mobile.

    More numbers to consider:  At the end of 2011 tablets accounted for 38% of all mobile paid clicks.  That number is expected to grow to 45% at the end of 2012.

    Mobile also leads in CTR and offers a lower cost per click, but conversions were lower.  At the end of 2011, the CTR for smartphones was 4.12%, 3.12% for tables and 2.39% for PC’s.  Cost per click was $0.83 for PC’s, while $0.63 for tables and $0.53 for smartphones.

    The average conversion rate by device:  5.2% for PC’s, 4.9% for tables and 2.0% for smartphones.

• Are Your Landing Pages “Landing”

  • According to a recent, quite informal survey of websites, four common mistakes were found on landing pages.  They are:  too much text, bad headlines, lack of a call-to-action and lack of testimonial-style back-up.  In other words, do you have 3rd party proof that your product/service is the best?

    Let’s start with “too much text”:  I have a twenty plus year career in the advertising and marketing business.  Creating a great landing page is not much different than creating a great print ad.  First, make it visually appealing.  Make sure that the visual communicates the story you want to communicate and the text complements it or vice versa.  Make them relevant.

    A web page full of text is no more interesting than a full page ad full of text.  People’s time and attention spans are limited, you stand no chance of engagement if you load your page with text.  But when you combine a great graphic with a great headline, you begin to tell a story that is unique to you; a story that will actually attract viewers and engage them.

    If you’re not sure if your pages constitute good writing or not, we recommend you visit other sites.  What brands do you like?  Southern Comfort?  Check out their site.  Under Armour?  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  See what they are doing.  After that, check out your competition and see what’s going on with their sites.  All of these efforts will help you to create better landing pages for yourself.

    Here are a couple of simple tips to writing great headlines:  Make sure it communicates a specific benefit.  Generic, broad headlines do not encourage engagement.  And, please make sure you have a headline.  Do not be tempted re-write the rules of design ande marketing by going without a headline.

    Have a call to action.  Duh.  Tell the visitor what you want them to do.

    And finally, be cognizant of the fact that websites need to establish credibility with their visitors.  This is a different buying experience than going into a retail store.  You know this, but it bears reiteration.  Make sure your site uses the testimonials or names of other clients to help you create credibility.

    If you find your pages lacking in these areas, take your time and improve them one at a time.  You’ll increase engagement in no time.

• Great Blog Content and Keywords – Yes you can

  • We write a lot about generating quality website and blog content, because it is so important.  A great resource for this topic is http://www.clickz.com.  They consistently deliver articles and graphics that help make our jobs as online affiliate marketers easier.

    First step in great content writing is deciding what type of content you’re creating.  Here’s a sampling:  how-to’s, little known facts (humor works well here), taking a poll and sharing results, relevant statistics, interviews, top 10 lists, press releases, op-ed pieces, guest writers, case studies and white papers.

    Use social media monitoring to help you fine-tune your keywords.  When you enter a keyword search into Technorati or Social Mention you will find those words’ presence on various social media.  This helps you to see what people are talking about, and thereby what topics you should be writing about to get their attention.

    Another tool of great aid is Google Insights.  It not only gives you a visual of your keyword trend, but it applies a prediction for the future.  Seeing numbers on a page is one thing, but seeing a visual of those same numbers makes it much easier to grasp.  Additional “Insights” include lists of keywords that are trending up, thus giving you a slate of editorial opportunities to explore.

    We would be remiss if we did not mention the last two tools at your disposal.  Google Analytics of course shows you what keywords are driving traffic to your site.  Simply invaluable.

    Take the information learned above and create an editorial calendar for yourself.  The top column headings of your editorial calendar should include the Date, the content type (how-to, tips, etc), keywords, tags and attached media.  You’ll personalize it the more you use it.

    The big picture of great content writing is really made up of three components – deciding the content type, the topic and then actually writing it.  To consistently generate content don’t make it too complicated.  We often choose blog topics on one day, then write them on another.  It makes the process less painful.

• U.K. Guardian Predicts Social Will be the New Search

  • Search is the end all, be all for many marketers and many companies.  But for an increasing number, social is taking the place of traditional search.  The Guardian, the U.K. newspaper, predicts the change is coming fast.

    
    Tanya Cordrey, director of digital development for the news organization says, "It’s only a matter of time until social overtakes search for the Guardian."  She made the comment when discussing the organization’s facebook app.

    The app was launched six months ago and enables facebook users to share with friends in “frictionless” fashion, the articles they read on the site.  This is creating more traffic for the Guardian online and further, according to Cordrey, has generated more than it cost to develop the app.

    She also said that traffic from social is more than from search in many instances and this is the basis of her opinion that social will surpass traditional search in the near future.

    So what do you think that means for search as we know it?  Do you think that social searching will surpass organic or paid search for payday affiliate marketers?

• Apple in the Search Game?

  • Andy Atkins-Kruger reported in this article that Apple had purchased Chomp, an app search engine, for $50 million.  It works the same as a regular search engine in that you find apps by using keywords.  As it currently designed, Chomp covers both iPhone, iPad and Android. 

    
    He reported that the Chomp team is already at Apple working with them to replace/revise the current “App Stores” with Chomp or a revised version of it.

    There are now over ½ billion apps and the total app download total sits at about 25 billion.  Search for apps is a very active business.  In fact, it has been hypothesized that “app search” will eventually overtake regular search, because in effect they are achieving the same thing.  After all, apps are websites at their core right?

    One of the inevitable questions is will Chomp keep its Android listings?  It’s certainly an interesting question with many implications.  They may choose to make the system proprietary by deleting Android apps thereby driving traffic to their apps and system alone; or they may choose to be THE app search engine for all formats.

    Weaknesses of the Chomp search product include lack of geo-targeting by country as well as the need for greater social sharing.  With Apple at the helm, it seems probable that these fixes are in the works.

    There is also no way in writing this story without mentioning the big “G” in the room (Google.)    As computing goes more mobile and as app searches begin to overtake “regular” searches, you can see how Apple is setting itself up as THE computing solution for users and marketers and why Google+ is so important to Google.

• New AdWords Features on the Way

  • As reported by Pamela Parker in http://searchengineland.com/google-demographic-bidding-being-eliminated-to-clear-way-for-new-adwords-features-115132 Google has confirmed that demographic bidding on AdWords will end on March 21, 2012. 
    “This is a feature that we have to retire to introduce additional features down the line,” a Google spokesperson told Parker.

    The spokesperson confirmed that demographic exclusion will continue and that demographic will still be available.

    Demographic bidding allows advertisers to “bid” by gender or age filters on select sites on the Google network, including non-Google owned sites like BlackPlanet.com, Friendster.com, MySpace.com and OKCupid.com. 

    The targeting was based on data provided by the site, not by any data collected by Google.

    It seems that now that Google+ is in existence, plus the single privacy policy standard, Google may be about to unveil a more narrowly targeted set of user filters that advertisers can bid on.

    In his post on the subject, Traffick’s Andrew Goodman said he was eager for such targeting to be available both on the content network and on search ads. Only time will tell if his wish — shared by many other marketers — will come to pass.

• More Important Google Ad Stuff

  • Google is replacing some PPC ads with Google+ content for selected queries.  Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand reported on March 14, 2012 that Google is now highlighting “Latest Posts: from Google+ pages in the search results.

    Previously the Google+ Direct Connect feature had displayed recent Google+ posts directly below a brand’s “normal” links.  But Sullivan’s post makes it clear that Google is now testing search results pages that display recent Google+ postings on the right side of the page where PPC ads are typically located.

    Google told Search Engine Land the following regarding the recent change:
        “We’re continuing to experiment with the ways we can help you find and interact with the people you’re looking for or who may be related to the topic you’re searching for.”
    According to Dave Angotti of SearchEngineJournal the new format “allows a person or brand to saturate the top half of a search results page.”  The benefits to this are obvious.  And might I add, to this marketer the search page begins to look more like a half page ad of the New York times, rather than search results.

    It is Angotti’s suggestion that companies/brands./marketers develop a comprehensive Google+ strategy.  Wise advice.

    No word on what “selected queries” really means or the search categories that would be affected.

    Sources: Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land.

• Mozilla Announces 2012 Changes to Firefox

  • In the most recent changes to Firefox several old problems were worked out.  Old add-ons which were not working in new updates were made compatible and now all add-ons can be synched across several computers.

    A couple of updates look interesting such as “silent updates” and one we’ll call instant social.  First, “silent updates” which will be downloaded and silently installed without the user having to do anything.

    And later in 2012 the ability to share links and updates to a variety of social networks directly from the browser will be available.  There have been a couple of attempts to integrate social networking directly into various browsers, but none have caught on.

    When you think about it, it seems like the most logical thing in computing.  It’s truly a wonder that the practice is not an established part of computing.  We’ll see if Firefox will be the first.

    For a full list of 2012 updates go to:  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap

• Google De-indexing Blog Networks

  • Google is clamping down on blog networks such as BuildMyRank in an effort to do away with unnatural backlink profiles.  In some cases they have sent notifications saying that a particular site has been penalized or de-indexed for having artificial or unnatural links. 

    
    For affiliate marketers this is clearly a warning shot.  If you have artificial links you should begin the hard work of creating natural ones.  In the past Google has discouraged the practice of adding artificial links, but not taken actions near as strong as these.

    We would not recommend dumping them all at one time, but to avoid a sudden drop off in the near future you should at the very least identify what links, you have if any, that are artificial and be prepared to eliminate them if necessary.

• Social Ads are the Future

  • Make no mistake.  Social media grows in importance every day.  It’s important to your blog posts, and is increasingly important to your ad design/placement.  As Danny Goodwin points out on Search Engine Watch the Google +1 button encourages people to click on “socially enhanced ads”, and according to Nielsen, social ads increase ad recall by 55%.  No wonder social ads are getting our attention.

    Social Media by the Numbers
    According to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president for engineering, ads with a social annotation are seeing a 5 to 10% increase in click-through rate. 
    “We have been in this business for a long time, and there are very few things that give you a 5 to 10 percent increase on ad engagement,” Gundotra told the New York Times. He added that Google, unlike its competitors, can deliver these socially enhanced ads at the time of intent rather than at random in a social stream.

    According to a survey by Nielsen Media, social media ads generate a 55% increase in recall compared to non-social media ads.  This advantage in large part is due to the fact that 76% of internet users trust friends’ recommendations, while just 49% trust consumer opinions posted online.

    The Nielsen study examined 79 facebook studies over the last six months of 2011.  They concluded:
    “Based on this analysis, more and more advertisers may consider leveraging ads with social content as a means to better utilize the power of the network of consumers engaged with their brands. This also serves as justification for marketers’ efforts to create more social connection points with their consumers, as their brands will be better positioned to reach a larger group of prospects.”

    Studies by other media outlets support these findings.  According to Advertising Age, 27% of digital budgets will be social spending.  This represents a 22% increase over the previous year.

    According to eMarketer social networks could see revenue increase by 50% this year.  In fact, they expect media dollars spent on social networks to be over 7 billion, with facebook taking 70% of that total and Twitter garnering 8% by 2014.

• Who’s Using Social Media…By the Numbers

  • As most you know, demographics is the study of people and it is used by marketers to describe the viewers/listeners/readers/users, in short audience, of a particular TV program, newspaper or website.  Online MBA created this very informative infographic which as published on Mashable.  http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/social-media-demographics/
    It succinctly breaks down the users of the major social media.  So who are they?

    Facebook:  57% female; 43% male; 47% earn between $50,000 and $100,000.  33% earn between $25K and $50K.  Average number of friends:  130; Average visits per month:  40; Average time spent per visit:  23.2 minutes; 845 Million active users

    Twitter:  59% female; 41% male; the single largest age cell is adults 35-44 who make up 33%.  38% make $25K-$50K; 37% make $50K-$100K.

    Pinterest: 82% female; 18% male; 35% are over 45 yrs of age; 61% completed some college; 46% make $50-$100K.  The top geographic area is Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky.  The top interests are crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, Interior design, Fashion Designers/collections.  They have 21 million unique visitors who spend an average of 16.4 minutes per visit.

    LinkedIn: 150 million registered users who are 50/50 male/female.  Half also make between $50 and $100K.  Half also a bachelor’s or graduate degree.  There are two million companies on LinkedIn; 3 of 4 users use the site for business purposes; the average visit is 8 minutes.

• What Happens When You Pause AdWords?

  • Forget instances when you pause AdWords for holidays, vacations, etc.  For the sake of this article we are examining what happens when you pause in the hope that organic search will take up the slack.  According to Google, this does not happen.

    
    Here is a graph that illustrates what happens when AdWords is paused.

    The following information follows-up a July 2011 Google study (“Incremental Clicks Impact of Search Advertising”) that “showed the amount of search ad traffic that is incremental to traffic from an advertiser’s organic search results.”

    That study, which examined 5,300 hundred cases where accounts were totally paused. 
    Google found an average of 89% of paid clicks were lost and not recovered when a search campaign is paused.  This number, called the Incremental Ad Clicks (IAC) - was consistent across all verticals.  The new study found that 85% of clicks were lost.  Different campaigns, time of year, etc. play into slight numbers difference.

    In cases where AdWords spending was decreased rather than eliminated altogether, average lost clicks was 80%.

    The new study also flipped the factors in this way.  Say an advertiser was already spending on search ads and subsequently increased their spending – it was found that the increased ads resulted in 78% higher traffic. 

    In the case of an advertiser going from $0 spending to spending on search the traffic increase was 79%.

    The bottom line according to Google is that a pause or slowing of search spending is not made up by organic search.

• So You’re Optimizing Your Website…Where to Start?

  • We’re assuming you do not have a staff of 20 to help you with site optimization.  So if it’s just you working on your site you may be asking yourself, “where do I start?”  Glad you asked.  In an post for DailySEOTip, Nick Stamoulis offers the following tips to get the most from your efforts right from the start.

    Start With Your High Level Pages.
    What are your tabs?  In most cases these are the pages that will have the most inbound links, so it makes the most sense to tidy those up first.  Even if you haven’t actively built links, they do happen naturally over time.  You want to optimize these pages first also because they probably target broader keywords and thus attract a wider target audience.  You want visitors to find these pages at all times.

    Next, target your Best Revenue Generating Pages
    There is good news here.  As these pages are already generating income for you, they are either already optimized to perform, or hopefully with a tweak or two, they will convert even greater numbers for you.

    Most Visited Pages
    If you been an affiliate marketer for a while, you may have hundreds of pages of articles, blog posts, etc.  Start with the most visited pages and work your way down.

    Optimizing a website can be a daunting-looking job, but when you break it down and give yourself several benchmarks you will find the process will go faster, or at the very least will appear to go faster.  The major reason for doing it in this way though is to bring your site the most benefit the fastest.

• Top Brands not Optimizing Their Facebook Pages Properly

  • The top 200 brands in the world are not doing an effective job optimizing their Facebook or Twitter pages for search engine rankings.
    
    The SEO platform BrightEdge has analyzed the leading consumer brands. The firm has determined that these brands do have a social media presence, but they are not performing adequate SEO practices to optimize their social network pages on the major search engines.
    
    BrightEdge has reported that nearly all of the top consumer brands are ranked at or near the top of the organic searches. And, 68 percent of these companies' Facebook or Twitter pages are in the top 20 search results. But the objective for online marketers is to be within the top 10 results in order to generate the best website traffic results.
    
    BrightEdge found there is no direct connection between a company's social network friends list and its search engine ranking.
    
    According to the study, the industries that are the weakest in effectively optimizing social media are the finance and insurance industries. Of the top 43 financial and insurance companies, only three firms have Facebook fan pages rank near the top.

• 7 + Ideas for Building Links to Your Affiliate Website

  • With the help if ViperChill, here are a list ideas for creating inbound links to your site.  Some of the ideas we’ve talked about before, so we will just create an idea bin for those.
    1.     Make Your Site Useful.  In an effort to create a site with quality content, ask yourself if your site is useful to your target market.  If you were a member of your target market would you come to, then explore your website?  This is a little creating like the logline of a movie.  A logline distills an entire movie down to one sentence.  Can you do that with your website?  By keeping that goal in mind it will help you to edit and formulate content that is useful to your clientele.
    2.    Leave Blog comments.  These comments themselves do not create links, but they get your name in a conversation and over time hopefully will lead to traffic from other commenters, who will then link to your blog.
    3.    Participate on social bookmarking sites.  A bookmarking site like Delicious gives you a place to store your favorite bookmarks in an organisable archive.  Don’t pay for links and do your research as to the best bookmarking sites.
    4.    Add links to your signature.  This will be of help to you when you post on forums.
    5.    Use free content sites…carefully.  A site such as Hubpages allows almost anything, while Squidoo does some policing to eliminate spam-y sites.  If you do this, make your post a quality one.  Make it one readers will want to share.
    6.    Use article directories.  Ezine comes highly recommended.  Submit your article and place your links in the author box.  Can’t get much simpler than that. 
    7.    Create a great resource, such as a white paper that you offer to site visitors.  If you are generating leads for insurance, then you have a treasure chest of ideas from which to choose that the average consumer shopping for insurance online would find interesting.  Just about any information that will help them save money will be of interest to them.

    Idea Bin:  Use guest posts on your site and offer your posts to other blogs, interview someone important in your business, (this can be hard in the affiliate marketing business, because the important people in this business have nothing to do with the end consumer.  You might be looking for interview subjects who operate in the field of insurance or consumer finance that can offer some tips to your customers.)  design a great looking site,

    Our final word on link building is this:  be patient.  It takes time for quality links to build and for you to see the fruit of your labors.

• More “Writing Great Blog Posts”

  • Here are a few more suggestions to help you write great blog posts. 
    As much as Google likes words and text, and words and text, it likes pictures too.  (And yes, video too, but that’s another post).  Invariably the time comes to pick and post a photo to go with your article or blog.  How do you choose? 
        Look for a photo that illustrates the feeling or emotion of the post
        Illustrate a metaphor for your main idea
        Post a surprising photo (comedic often) that illustrates your point
        Complement your headline – This helps you to write better headlines as well, if for example you find the image first
        Images help communication and aid readers in remembering your story. 
    Quality meta descriptions will help your posts rank higher.  You know that, but for some beginners, here are a few things to remember.  Search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description.  If you don’t post a description, they will take the first 160 words of your article.

    You should know that if you use fewer than 160 characters, the description will show in the search engine.  If you use more, it will cut off. 
    Better descriptions result in high visibility and higher visibility results in greater sharing.

• Pinterest. Can it Work for B2B?

  • Pinterest.  It’s everywhere on the web.  It’s easy to see how certain consumer products can benefit, but can it help Business to Business marketing efforts?
    Pinterest is a big bulletin board with users’ likes, interests, etc.  pinned to it.  These interests can be shared with other Pinterest users, as well as being tweeted and posted to Facebook.  Your “influence” grows as other users “like” your pin or “repin” your pins to their board.  The benefit to companies is that the pins link back to the company’s website.

    Let’s take a look to see if Pinterest can work for you.

    First ask yourself if your target market uses Pinterest.  For those under the T3Leads Umbrella we can make some very general hypotheses.  The average Pinterest user is female and upscale.  Most statistics put the percentage of female users at 60 to 65%.  The average user in this case may be a bit too upscale for the average payday loan target market, but may be right in line with the target for insurance.  This is not to say that if payday loans are your target, that you ignore Pinterest altogether.  Due to its explosive growth, you should still keep an eye on it for future marketing efforts.

    Mark Hotz in an article for ClickZ points to the example of General Electric who has created several custom boards with titles such as "Making Data Work," "That's Genius!" and "From the Factory Floor."

    If GE is finding ways to take advantage of the platform, we should keep it in mind as well.
    So, you’ve decided to give it a shot.  What should your bookmark look like? 
    1.    Make it visual.  Pasting your company mission statement or something equally text heavy is a not going to work. 
    2.    Brainstorm for stories that lend themselves to visual storytelling.   In the case of insurance, show the end result of your product.  The car or the house with the customer.  Or maybe contrast their life with insurance and without insurance as a visual story.  It can be as simple as car parked, versus car with top down cruising on a sunny day.  For fans of fiction writing, you could write a short, humorous story that begins with our hero/heroine in a bind with the eventual outcome of course a positive one, as a result of your product. 
    You can also design your posts in two parts that require the user to click to your website to get the answer or the end to the story.
    3.    What should the bookmark look like?  As mentioned, photographs are great, but don’t rule out illustrations, animation, video and even comics to attract viewers.  Hotz also recommends screen captures from webinars, photos from past or upcoming events, tutorial videos and data charts.

    And what else?

    • Make sure you have a search-friendly “About” statement on your profile page. 
    • Customize your board to coincide with the rest of your digital strategy.  Use your keywords.
    • Make it easy to pin your content.  Put a “pin it” button everywhere you would put a twitter or facebook button. 
    • Make sure you pin bookmarks that are worthy.  Use others’ influence to help your own.
    • Finally, before making a final decision, as with any new platform, go to the site and investigate.  See how others are using it.  If you decide to jump in, my advice is to let your imagination run wild.  Maybe think of selling yourself; your hobbies, adventures and make it visually compelling.  This is in turn will in the long run help to drive users to your site.

• New Facebook Pages for Business

  • On Leap Day, (Feb 29) Facebook announced changes to their Business/Organization/Group Pages.  New features include the ability to add milestones, cover pages, customize the page, message privately, view activity logs and access to more admin tools.

    As with Timeline for profiles, Pages will now have the ability to add a photo at the top of their page.  You also have the ability to select posts and give them greater visibility.  This feature makes your facebook page act similar to a landing page.  You can highlight a certain marketing message that by virtue of being at the top of your page, it will stand out and thereby make it easier for visitors to act in the way you want them to.

    The new ability of brands to message privately with users is key.  Other key improvements include an enhanced admin page that adds notifications, new likes and a graph showcasing recent activity.  If you have not upgraded your page yet, or are thinking of creating a facebook brand at long last, here’s a link to facebook to get you started on your new page.

• Converting Keywords: Where are They Hiding?

  • To identify the keywords that are associated with conversions, go to Traffic-Sources-Search-Organic.  Click advanced segments and apply the custom segment.  And, Presto you will see the search queries that were successful in achieving your goals within a certain time frame.  It is her recommendation that you set your date range to a long period, three months say, depending on your total search volume.  So, what are you going to find?

        Brand Keywords – In addition to your own of course, this category includes competitors’ brands.  Make it hard for them to steal conversions on your keywords by optimizing your landing pages for conversion.
        How-To Keywords – These are people looking for, well, “how-to” do something. 
        Geographic Keywords – Pretty obvious, but if a certain area is trending high, address it.
        Product Keywords – For the online lead generation market, this line may show affiliate, marketing, lead generation, etc.

    This process will reveal the keywords that are converting.  Give them special attention by sharing them in your social circles, building links to those pages, increasing your bids for these keywords.

• The Four Reasons Why Your Content is not Being Shared

  • You’re writing and posting blogs.  You’re telling everyone via social media that they’re there.  But your work is not being shared.  Why?
    1.    You’re not delivering what they want.  Yes keywords, but more.  Is your post entertaining, engaging, visually appealing?  Are you providing information that your market needs or wants?  Quality, not quantity.  Part 2 of this:  Don’t write boring posts.  I, like most people am a big fan of humor and that will help you to draw readers in.  If you’re not funny, try appealing to readers on another emotional level.  Tugging at the heart strings works too.
    2.    People care about causes.  Yes, this approach works much better if you are a retail outlet of some kind, but even if you are an affiliate marketer ask yourself if by connecting to a cause you might create a Win/Win.  Many of us do charity work and are passionate about particular causes.  There are thousands of people out there who feel as you do.  Don’t be afraid to use your blog to educate people about causes and what they can do to help.  Health and the environment are two causes that not only need our attention but have many followers waiting to share the quality  information you can provide. 
    3.    You’re not building a relationship with your audience.  People share and become engaged with people, not with a nameless website or brand.  People will always look to build community.  Ask yourself after you’ve written something, if it is something that a stranger would share.
    4.    You misunderstand your audience.  Do you have a visual of a typical customer in your mind when you write?  You should.  You have many different kinds of customers, don’t think about the same one each time.  What are your customers doing when you they visit your site?  What are their lives like?  What types of jobs do they have?  Family?  When you have an accurate picture in your mind, your writing will improve and your response rate will increase.
    Practice makes perfect.  When you have a post or two that is shared, do not forget to examine them and determine what exactly made people interested in them.

• Google is Changing Search

  • Announced today, March 15, 2012, Google plans to change its search engine in a way that they hope will answer questions rather than providing links to a grouping of sites.  For example, if ask how many mountain ranges there are in Montana, Google will try to send you to a site that has the answer rather than to a site that with the keywords “mountain ranges in Montana” that may or may not have the answer to the question.

    The company, according to Google Fellow Amit Singhal, is working to give its search engine a better understanding of the words it's searching. Google wants to do away with simply searching for word strings and coming out with Web site links, according Singhal.

    In 2010, Google bought Metaweb, a company whose free and open database called Freebase, a large collection of information on people, places and things, Google is using in this search project. The more words and phrases that Google's search engine knows, the more easily it can find more precise query results, Singhal said.

    This sounds like a change that will be helpful.  It also sounds a lot like Ask.com.  We’ll learn more about this change next week and will keep you updated.

• The Nuts and Bolts of Small Business Blogging

  • In a recent article long time blogger Lee Odden, asked if small business blogging really works.  In it he makes some general observations about blogging.  This wasn’t necessarily his attention, but when you re-define blogging in your mind, you could very well achieve a new level of success.

    Blogs are essentially easy to use “content management systems.”  Right on.  Their structure offers several inherent advantages:

    •     Blogs are an easy to use platform in which to create “sharable, linkable content” that addresses current and potential customer concerns and interests.  In addition to current and potential customers, blogs can reach the media, including other bloggers and other marketing partners.
    •     They serve as a “hub” of content marketing and promotion
    •     They create a promotable SEO and social media asset – every post is a potential destination for a link and also acts as an entry point from search engines.
    • His purpose was not to make us think differently about blogging, but he nonetheless succeeds.  Often times when we re-define an activity, the simple process of re-defining it will cause us to look at it in a different way.  This is quite healthy overall, as well as effective in re-aligning an activity in our minds so we look at it in a way that generates different and improved results in the long run.

     

• Twitter Ads go Mobile

  • Twitter announced that promoted tweets are soon coming to twitter apps for iPhone and Android.  This comes following an announcement from twitter in September 2011 that 55% of users access its platform via mobile devices.

    Initially a limited number of promoted tweets will show to a limited number of users and only from brands they are following.  They’ll also act like other tweets in that they’ll scroll away with the rest of the timeline.

    Recently, a separate Twitter promotional product, “promoted accounts” was expanded to iPhone and Android platforms.  These are visible in the “who to follow” suggestions.

    Many of you may want to target Twitter mobile users directly, but at this time that option is not available.  Initially, mobile will be included by default.  Also, geographic targeting is not available yet, but is planned for the near future.

• We read 9 Infographics and here’s what we learned about Social Media

  • Dreamgrow published some interesting infographics about social media and here are some highlights of what we learned. 
    http://www.dreamgrow.com/9-social-media-infographics-you-must-see/

    
    •    65% of U.S. adults use social media every day
    •    Twitter and facebook are the preferred social media outlets for small business.  78% of twitter, 75% for facebook, then 30% for linkedIn
    •    62% of small businesses post 8+ times per week on social networks
    •    Small business postings get more comments per day on average than personal accounts.  5.40 versus 3.67
    •    Best times to share on facebook:  The best day is Saturday because most sharing is done on Saturday; the best time to post is Noon.
    •    A simple social media strategy how-to:  1. Identify your target market geographically and demographically.  2.  Determine what your audience would tweet about (keywords and phrases) and go follow them.  3.  Determine which social networks your market is using.  4.  Determine what your audience would consider valuable information and create that conversation.    5.  Make sure you other marketing efforts are linked to your social efforts.  6.  Develop a daily plan and build your community.

• Facebook Ads: Truth and Rumor

  • Facebook will begin to place ads when you log off on your mobile device (true) and a leaked marketing memo tells how your friend’s brand likes will appear on your newsfeed. (rumor)

    Truth. 
    When you log off facebook from your mobile device an ad will pop up, the company announced February 28, 2012.  The practice, to be called “stories” will begin sometime in April and will reach the 37 million people who log off fb from a mobile device every day.

    The “stories” are a shift from traditional advertising to well, stories.  They will originate from Brand Pages and will be piloted by Butterfinger, Dr. Pepper and EA. 
    Director of customer marketing, Mike Hoefflinger, said that the new “stories” deliver $3 of sales for every $1 spent and will deliver 5 to 10 times the CTR of other Facebook ads.
    The company says that this format further explores the evolving relationship between brands/companies and consumers.  They believe the stories to be more engaging.  They also believe traditional advertising/marketing is changing to this mindset.

    This brings to mind a question:  Is consumer/brand interaction really changing or is this something for industry observers to write about and social media outlets story to keep advertisers interested?  And, do you think we will still be marketing with this mindset five years from now?  Keeping in mind of course that marketing is always changing.

    Rumor.
    A leaked facebook marketing memo goes like this:  Currently, if I like a company, its messages/stories appear on my newsfeed.  For the future apparently, these posts will increase to include your friend’s brands’ likes will also appear on your feed.  Facebook is calling it “storytelling.”  They go on to say that the practice will lead to a 40% increase in engagement and will result in 80% greater recognition.

    This writer thinks that this will in fact lead to a whole lot of, “boy this was more fun two years ago.”
    “It gives you an incentive, honestly, to eliminate some of your peripheral friends,” says Sam Hamadeh, CEO at financial research company PrivCo.
    But apparently Facebook is willing to risk alienating a few because the payoff is theoretically so huge when you do the math.  If a brand has 50,000 followers, under the current system their message reaches 50,000 people; but since the average user has 300 friends, under the new system, a brand’s story will now reach 15,000,000 people.  Beginning to see the forest, through the trees?

    And according to the memo, video and sound are on the way as well.  Feels more like commercial TV all the time, doesn’t it?

• Digital Advertising Trends

  • Adwords comprises the long and short list of digital advertising outlets used by most affiliate marketers.  And rightfully so.  You hit the consumer while they are actively looking for your product or service – it makes great business sense.  But, are there other outlets that can successfully drive traffic to site(s)?  Using Neil Patel’s article in Search Engine Journal as a starting point, let’s take a look:
    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-hot-digital-advertising-trends-you-cant-ignore/40606/

    Neil starts the trend-list off with the stated need for ad campaigns to be social by design.  As a veteran marketer myself, there is a part of me that chuckles at this.  There is nothing new or unique to digital advertising and sharing.  Good/effective/funny ad campaigns have been shared all for a long time.  The difference in today’s marketplace is that services and products are easier to share than it was previously.  The other big difference is that third parties (Google, bing, etc) “rate you socially,” thus creating a value to your word of mouth.

    But the question brought by “social by design” is, are you developing content that is easily understandable, sharable and touches some desire of the reader?  I think more than at any other time, you should connect your product or service to the human imagination.  Again, I understand that great marketing has always done this, but digital media refines this notion and insists that it be designed in a way that is easy to share.

    Make your content the kind of content readers want to share because it’s enlightening, funny or otherwise provides some benefit to the reader. 
    Find your Target Market with Facebook.  You can filter your target market by age, education level, location and interests.  Neil says that hitting your target market happens about 90% of the time with facebook and prior to fb, it happened just 35% of the time.  Holy bullseye Batman, that’s gonna help bolster ROI! 

    
    The importance of web analytics.  The use of web analytics is not limited to simply using them.  It is using them properly.  You should do four things to help you use web analytics better.  The following is a great tool to help guide you in the world of analytics.
    http://blog.kissmetrics.com/make-web-analytics-work/

    Optimize Your Site for Social Media.  First, Neil makes a key point.  Social media is not a campaign, it’s a channel.  “It will help you get somewhere, it’s not where you are going.” 
    You should make your social share buttons visible, ask readers to share your content and consider paid social ads on twitter and facebook.  And of course, Google+.  It’s a necessary evil.  Just do it.
    This list paints with broad strokes.  Its purpose is to get you in the mood for social media marketing and hopefully to look at it in a different way, and as a near necessity in today’s modern marketing environment.

• Do Consumers Trust Paid Search?

  • The answer is yes…and no.  According to a report from Nielsen media, “The State of the Media, US Digital Consumer Report,“ ads in search engine results scored in the top half of online advertising trust-worthiness.

    The most trusted ads were those that were posted on a “branded website.”  52% of females and 51% of males trusted these ads.  Next were ads that ran on TV.  This is television that is watched online.  Next was TV Program Product placements with 35% of females and 37% of males trusting these ‘ads.”
    Fourth in line are ads placed in search engine results.  39% of women, but only 34% of men trust these ads.
    The least trusted online advertising is display ads on mobile devices with females at 31% and males at 23% and holding up the rest on the bottom is text messages on mobile with 29% of females and only 22% of males regarding them as trustworthy.

    Please note that this survey does not rank effectiveness.  There is no doubt that even the “least trusted” can most definitely be effective.  Allow me to illustrate.

    There is less competition with text sent via mobile than in paid search for instance.  There is much to be said for being the exclusive advertiser with the opportunity to provide the exclusive message to the user.  A well-crafted message can go a long way to selling your product or service in this kind of environment.

• A Google Search Algorithm Change That Affects Affiliate Publishers

  • On Thursday, January 19, 2012 Google announced some search changes that we know will affect some of you, so we thought it important to review. 
    Here are the important parts:

    “As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

    “We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.”
    Go to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ for more information.

• Optimizing Websites for Tablets

  • For those of you who do use T3Leads’ sites, which are already optimized for mobile use, including tablets, you need to optimize your sites so they operate on mobile.  Most of you have done this, but for you beginners and procrastinators, here are some tools to help you get up on mobile without a minimum of hassle.  Mobify, Pressly and OnSwipe are three companies that specialize in optimizing sites for mobile usage.

    Mobify:  Mobify is the lastest to introduce mobile optimization for the masses.  Describes its platform is a “unique HTML5 solution that makes your website responsive to any device.”  The platform works with any content management, e-commerce or sales automation system.  Claims no IT is needed.

    Pressly: Their self-serve platform for the little guys like us will be available in the spring.  But it works like the original does for the big guys.  Pressly connects to your existing online content sources, including RSS, in-house CMS’s and Twitter and automatically renders them into HTML5.  As above it recognizes the device and delivers a touch optimized layout.

    Pressly monetizes your content by giving you the ability to ad full-page, interactive ads between your articles.  This requires some initial set-up, but is hands free after. 
    Claims to have you up and running in 3 days.

    OnSwipe: Has a free version that is available to everyone who uses Wordpress, as well as a few other sources.  The site is customizable no matter your content.  Choose from “tons” of layouts, add your logo and branding colors as well.  We did find some reviews that were not kind to Onswipe regarding iPad designed sites, but it is free after all.

    You should investigate and see which platform works best for your particular site.

• 5 Ways to Improve Facebook Marketing

  • With the above article’s focus on making twitter work for you, it’s only fair that we take a look at facebook to see how it can be used to help affiliate marketers.  Christine Erickson in a post for Mashsable offered the following thoughts.
    http://mashable.com/2012/02/20/facebook-marketing-small-business/ 
    1.     Check Name Vine to see if your vanity URL is available.
    2.    Use a third party platform to distribute content.  It is recommended that at the very least you set up a Welcome Page and a Contact Us Page.  Two programs North Social and Pagemodo can help you achieve this.  Pagemodo offers some services for free and North Social has services beginning at $20 per month, so you won’t go broke in developing a look on facebook that at the very least looks partially customized.
    3.    Use social plug-ins.  By using these you invite greater connection to your page and engagement with your brand.  https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/ Go here for a compilation of free facebook apps.
    4.    Use Facebook Insights to review your efforts.  See what posts received the most comments and the most likes.  It will help you to develop content that your audience wants to read.  You can even download this information into an excel file.
    5.    Provide localized content.  For example, if you are an affiliate working on Canada payday, you know that as of this writing we are accepting applications in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.  With the facebook localizing tool you can target just those provinces.  It’s easy to do:  Click on Status above the “Write something” bar,t hen click custom.  Choose your locations from there.  You can also just target US or UK payday by using the same tool.  Combine use of this tool with targeted ads in those areas and you may see an increase in conversion rates.

    We hope the these two articles help you to achieve greater results in your social media efforts.

• Backlinks and SEO

  • With the help of Johannes Selbach and SEOprofiler let’s take a look at creating quality backlinks that will help improve your SE ranking.
    http://blog.seoprofiler.com/2012/02/fab-four-create-natural-backlink-profile/
    1.     Create a link-worthy site.  Create interesting content people will naturally want to link to.  Tutorials, videos, Top 9 lists – all of these things improve the likelihood of your site being linked and that’s a good thing.
    2.    Solve other people’s problems.  In other words present content offers solutions to your reader’s problems.  But don’t stop there.  Send your article to people in the business in the hope that they will repost.  http://www.seoprofiler.com/tour/link-building-tools-new this tool will help you to find those people and improve your backlinks.
    3.    Make sure you create links to different pages of your website.  Those that actually address the topic you’re writing about.
    4.    Do not use automated backlink systems.  Search engines will figure out you’re doing this and will penalize you.

    We write a lot about SEO and the reason is obvious.  It’s our business.  The one thing that all of the how-to’s we’ve written have in common is this:  quality content.  Once you’re generating that, watch the traffic build.

    If you have a topic you would like us to cover, please feel free to send us a line here and we’ll do the research and present the article.

• 2011 UK Business Search Engine Usage

  • In a report done and released by Econsultancy in association with Guava, here are some numbers to ponder for marketers in the UK.  650 respondents comprised of in-house marketers, supply-side firms including agencies and consultants replied online to make-up the data.

    63% of the firms said they were planning to increase 2011 social media spending.
    30% of the respondents said they used local search, but a further 21% were planning to do so.
    2/3 of the respondents said they increased their Google PPC budgets, and 12% said they decreased them.

    Integration of paid search and display is slow in coming.  46% said there was some integration, while 45% said there was none, leaving just 9% who said they were totally integrated.

    Just over half (53%) of the direct advertisers (clients) said they follow up search with display ads; 64% of agencies and consultants said their clients did so.

    2/3 of companies surveyed said they carry out their own social media marketing in-house, vs. 42% for paid search and 52% for SEO.

    Companies were asked what their primary objectives for paid search were.  49% reported that “driving traffic” was the main objective; direct online sales was reported by 45%.  Branding was reported by 26% (respondents could choose more than one.)

• Improving Conversion Rates

  • Increased conversion rates, even small improvements, can make huge differences in your bottom line.   With the help of John Lynch in an article in Search Engine Watch here are 5 ways to improve your conversion rate for organic and paid landing pages.  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2107126/The-5-Keys-to-Conversion-Rate-Optimization

    1.    Relevancy.  Users have come to your site with expectations.  What brought them there will determine what they expect to find.  Make sure your content matches your links.  Your H1 should match or almost match the keywords that were used to bring the traffic there.
    Photos and graphics can reinforce the reason they are there.  If someone clicked on “free auto insurance quotes” for instance, make sure there is a car somewhere to be seen on that page.

    2.    Clear Course of Action.  It should be immediately clear what you want the visitor to do.  Think of it as a maze where you can see the end point.  A variety of media will help illustrate your point, without being overly complicated.  Make key features and benefits clear and easy to find.

    3.    Trust.  This is very important establish in any online financial services industry.  Put your security badges front and center where they can be easily seen.  The faster you establish trust the more conversions you will have.  Period.  Skepticism and a lack of information are the primary reasons people will vacate your site. 
    Use language that reassures people.  Secure server; we take privacy seriously; testimonials that inspire trust, etc.

    4.    Understand Your Brand’s Sales Cycle.  Complex businesses require longer sales cycles.  Don’t try to sell these products/services from page one.  If your product is less complicated, make the sale part of page one.  Conversion rates tend to increase when calls to action are placed on the right side.  Be smart with design; not too crowded and good use of color and graphics can enhance the visitor’s experience.  The ultimate call to action should be clear and colorful.

    5.    No distractions.  Remove global navigation from your PPC templates.  No off-topic material.  Limit the amount of information you need for a conversion.  Only essential data.  Stay on point.

• Mobile Trends

  • In a recent article for clickz, Jeremy Lockhorn offered some thought and opinions on the state of mobile programming marketing.  How many do you agree with and what trends do you see for mobile?

    • Mobile is the new first screen.  In the past TV and desktop web were the first two screens, but increasingly firms are recognizing that mobile is taking over.  For example, ESPN VP and General Manager of mobile says that the network’s first screen is now mobile; given his job, he better of course.  But don’t laugh him off – he said that the network’s mobile reach was 20 million last year.  No numbers to sneeze at, that’s for sure.  In it’s IPO offering, Facebook showed that they had 425 million mobile users.  As FB gives mobile more attention, particularly as an income generator, look for that number to do nothing but grow.
    • The Platform Race will generate tech advances. Apple began as the unquestioned leader, and to many still is, of the mobile phone platform, but Android is catching up.  At least it can be said that they are selling a lot of units.  Also hoping to jump into the mix is Microsoft.  Their Windows 8 phone is getting good if not excellent reviews, so expect the competition among the three to result in better products for users in the end.
    •  Mobile becomes more behavior based.  They’re already location and time aware.  The cameras allow for the recording and posting of images; not just pictures, but bar codes too.  We watch TV and other types of programming on the.  We even talk to them and they talk back.  As technology increases the abilities of the phones will only increase what we are able to do with them.  The prediction for all of this is that marketing messages will become more behavior based and relevant.
    •  Mobile Shopping.  Yes, people will buy more stuff online, we know that.  But it is the way they are doing it that keeps changing.  They are researching while shopping; not just pricing but product specs and comparisons.  They are going to stores, but buying online.  That model will have a limited lifespan as more and more storefronts go out of business.  The certainty in all of this is uncertainty. 

     

    The only real given is that mobile is changing everything. 

• It’s a Mobile World Out There

  • Forrester Research released its newest study and this one focuses on the power of mobile and in fact titles the report: ”Mobile is the New Face of Engagement.”

    Among the highlights are their prediction (and not many people are debating this point) that one billion people will own a smartphone or tablet.  As Forrester puts it, “mobile is not simply another device for IT to support with a shrunken website or a screen-scraped SAP application. Rather, mobile is the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement.”

    This is an important distinction as mobile is more than just making your current website smaller.  It is understanding that mobile is a new mode of consumer behavior.  What are they doing, and in many cases, what else are they doing, when they engage with you and your product on a mobile device? Are they fact-gathering or driven by the immediate want or need for the product?  In the case of payday loans for instance, chances are that the inquiry is driven by need and you may might further infer that the applicant is either at the site of event that’s driving the need for cash or maybe even at the place where they will ultimately spend the money.

    The more affiliate marketers can learn about mobile and how consumers are using it, the better prepared they will be as it continues to grow.

    Other facts from the study include U.S. mobile growth where it is expected by 2016 that 257 million people will own smartphones and 126 million will own tablets. 
    Apple, Google and Microsoft are expected to make up 91% of the smartphone market and 98% of the tablet market.

    A couple of other stories from the study to consider:  Walgreens says that 25% of its transactions come from its mobile app and Insurer Aflac reports that the equivalent of 25 million customer calls have been handled through its mobile app.

    Granted none of us are not Walgreens or Aflac, but the message is clear.  You must be prepared for the switch to mobile.

    That’s just one of the many reasons why T3Leads is your choice for affiliate marketer - because all of our sites are mobile ready.

• Mobile Advertising: Who’s Doing it?

  • According to Millennial Media’s 3rd quarter 2011 “SMART” report, Finance became the company’s top vertical for mobile advertising.  Millennial Media is the largest independent mobile ad network.

    Within the vertical of “finance” insurance comprised 38% of the total, followed by 22% for financial services such as investing or loans.  Banks and credit cards are regarded separately and made up 18% of the total. 
    Millennial Media also pointed out that people who access financial information or apps using a mobile device are twice as likely to own a smartphone as the general population and the financial audience is 76% more likely to own a tablet or e-reader.

• Optimizing a Blog Post

  • I ran across this great “blog post optimization how-to” and thought it worthwhile to review.  Sometimes we get in bad habits…especially us writers (or should that be “we” writers)…and it’s beneficial to review the basics to make sure we’re doing what we need to do to insure our posts are working hard for us.  http://marketingzeus.com/article/optimizing-a-blog-post

    Article Title. Your article title has up to 65 characters.  Since it a part of the permanent URL, make sure it’s on the money.  And of course, incorporate your keywords.

    Page Title.  Use the page meta-data to support your keywords to describe page content.  Wordpress (WP) has plug-ins available to help with this project.Description.  This should tie in with the above two properties to communicate what the article is about.  The WP plug-in will help in its construction.  Desc’s are less than 250 characters.

    Content.  Be sure to use the meta-keywords in your content.  Don’t forget to use variations of the keywords as well.

    Bold and Italics.  Use to make the post easier to read, not just for SEO purposes.

    Look for Internal Links.  Do you have a previous post that is tied thematically to the current one?  Don’t forget to link back to your previous post.  This process helps to keep people on your site longer; visiting older posts adds weight to your site.  DON’T FORGET:  When you hyperlink, do not forget to add a title on the hyperlink box.  It’s easy to overlook and it helps to identify what your link is.  

    Post Images.  Photos, illustrations, graphics add to a blog post.  But don’t stop there.  Make sure you title the photo.  Don’t let it stay as SSW_Image…. – This serves several purposes.  First, it helps search engines and second, when people move the cursor over the image it shows them why the picture is there.  And, by having a title, your photo will pop up when people conduct a photo search.Post Article to Social Media. 

    Always let people know you’ve posted.

• Ad Agencies Seeing More Mobile Interest

  • STRATA has released findings from its latest survey and they reveal great optimism.  Over 1,000 advertising agencies were surveyed and 81% percent expect their client’s “approach” to advertising and marketing to stay the same or increase in the coming year.  Additionally, 80% of the agencies will focus more on digital than they did a year ago.

    There was positive news on the job front too, as over 30% of the agencies surveyed said they plan to hire additional staff in 2012.

    More than 80% of the agencies said that their client’s interest on digital was more than in 2011.  And of course, slightly more than half said that their clients don’t understand digital.  As the former owner of an advertising agency, I can tell you more times than not, we think that clients don’t know much. 
    89% plan on using Facebook in upcoming campaigns, but there is a huge drop of to 39% for twitter, 36% for YouTube, 21% for LinkedIn and 18% for Google+.  For Google+, that mark reflects a 28 percent increase from the third quarter.

    The preferred way to advertise on mobile is display with 46% of the response, followed by SMS with 25%.

• A Baker’s Dozen Tips for Making Twitter Work for You

  • Pamela Vaughan gathered tips for getting the most out of twitter and published them in the following post for hubspot.com.  We’re providing the abridged version.
    http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2R1iwI/blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/25084/The-Ultimate-Cheat-Sheet-for-Expert-Twitter-Marketing.aspx/
    1.     Make the most of your profile.  Use an enticing description with keywords, and rather than a personal photo, consider using company logo or website logo.  She also suggests creating a unique landing page for people who find you through twitter.
    2.    Create a custom twitter background.  This will provide you with additional space to tell your story.
    3.    Promote your twitter presence on your website.  In addition add twitter sharing buttons to your content to make it easier to share.
    4.    Consider the use of third party sites to manage and monitor your efforts on twitter.  CoTweet and HootSuite are two popular ones.
    5.    Use keywords in your tweets.
    6.    Expand your presence.  Follow others, comment on their tweets, all with the purpose of building your personal brand.  Share content from others when appropriate.
    7.    Find out who is tweeting your content with WhoTweetedMe. 
    8.    Find out the best time to tweet with TweetWhen.
    9.    Use twitter to provide blog article topics.  Is there a question or two you have been asked that would make for an interesting blog post? 
    10.    Add “Please ReTweet” to your posts.  Recent research shows that those simple words increase the likelihood of retweeting by up to 4x.
    11.    Tweet Grader is a free tool used to scrutinize your social influence compared with others across twitter.
    12.    Stay up to date with all things twitter by subscribing to the twitter blog.  Don’t forget to use twitter analytics to help improve your content and the overall success of your twitter efforts.
    13.    Use twitter favorites to save follower positive comments and customer testimonials.

• Affiliate Marketers: Do You Have a Twitter Plan?

  • Affiliates love twitter.  And rightfully so, it helps build a brand.  But do you have a plan that helps you to organize your twitter use and to achieve results?  A hands dropped on that question.  If you have a twitter plan, skip to our next article, but if not, let’s jump right in.

    1.    Choose times to engage with Twitter.  In previous posts we’ve mentioned the importance of timing social media engagement.  First, because it‘s easy to waste too much time on social media; after all social is in its name.  Second, because it’s easy to aggravate followers with too many tweets, which ultimately defeats the purpose.  Our advice is choose two times per day.  Morning and evening works for many.

    2.    Have a variety of pre-planned tweets.  Mix in video, pictures and a quote here and there.  Here are some other thoughts:  re-tweet relevant material; relevant being the key word.  Set up your blog to auto-tweet a new posting.  Tweet about announcements, such as an upcoming conference you are attending.  Then share your experience at that conference.  Create a poll question.  If you have a hobby that your friends identify with you, consider sharing that with the rest of the world.  For instance are you a reader of classics?  Post a favorite quote.  Are you a hiker?  Post pictures from your latest hike.  No matter what your hobby is you will find that a surprise person or two will actively follow you because of that.  And ultimately, isn’t the purpose.

    3.    If you’re on vacation or just plain unavailable, schedule your tweets to go out whenever you want.

    4.    Set up an automatic welcome to new followers.  We can discuss the merits of this one, as I am not a huge fan of auto-generated “welcome to…” forms of communication.  I like the idea of a welcome, but don’t like the obvious-ness of a generic welcome.  If you can send out a live, original tweet that is best, but if not, create a welcome tweet that is funny, and may even acknowledge that it is in fact auto generated.  My recommendation is that auto-acknowledged is better than no greeting at all.

    5.    As with all social media use available measurement tools to see how you’re doing.  You’ll be surprised to see your growing list of followers as well as increased levels of engagement, if you create a twitter plan.

• Does Adwords tell you the Whole Keywords Story?

  • The following blog post from Rand on SEOmoz shows why only using Adwords as your sole basis of keyword research gives you incomplete results.  This is definitely a post worth checking out for any affiliate marketer who relies on SEO and Adwords to help them achieve success.
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/be-careful-using-adwords-for-keyword-research

    To summarize, Rand conducted a Google search for a key phrase, in this case “blog traffic,” in which SEOmoz scores high.  He then went into their Google Analytics account and pulled related keywords with their traffic counts.

    He then checked the Adwords tool and searched for “blog traffic.”  When he did this he found that the two lists had a number of discrepancies.  When he typed some of the missing keywords from Analytics into Adwords, they did indeed show up.

    So what’s the bottom line?  According to Rand, it’s this:  “Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase.”  He then offers a few suggestions, including purchasing a few broad keywords in Adwords and linking them to your site.  The point of this is to see which keywords garner the most impressions for future targeting.

    With that information, he suggests narrowing your selections to refine your keywords combinations.  You will more than likely end up with more targeted keyword variations.

    It’s a good article that I think sheds some light on a challenge faced by most of us every day.

• Online Banking Safety

  • Many consumers conduct much of their banking business now online. Most major banking brands offer this convenient and efficient method for numerous bank-related transactions and information.
    
    But the biggest concern for some consumers is security. With hackers and other online threats floating around the Internet, consumers want to make sure their information is as private and secure as possible.
    
    Consumers should use common sense to help avoid Internet scams.
    
    To protect yourself, consumers should:
    
    * Make sure the bank is legitimate and that the deposits are federally insured.
    
    * Read about the bank's history. It will usually include the firm's headquarters and information about its relationship with the FDIC.
    
    * Scam artists may create fake websites that look like the real deal. They lure consumers into these sites to collect their account numbers and passwords. Most legit banks also have a site key system. If the website you are in does not show a site key in order to verify your account, you should be suspicious.
    
    * A legitimate website will have an official FDIC logo. In addition, the FDIC website provides a service where you can search for banks covered by the FDIC.
    
    * Whether you are on a bank website -- or any other site, for that matter -- be careful providing your social security number. Be 100 percent confident your data is secure and protected before offering that kind of personal information.
    
    * Make sure your passwords are unique. And, try to avoid using the same password for everything. Avoid easy passwords such as your birthday, anniversary, etc.

• Writing Great Blog Posts…Really Great

  • Debbie Hemley wrote a Really Great blog for Social Media Examiner providing tips for writing great blog posts.  We’re going to review a few of the tips in the coming weeks in order to help us improve our blog posts.

    What questions are searchers “Searching for?”  Check your web analytics for the type of questions people are typing into search engines.  Are there questions that would lend themselves to new blog posts?  What do these questions tell you about your customers and do they point to areas of your business you should address?

    A well written blog that is well researched increases the likelihood of your post being shared.  Don’t be afraid to go to the library; yes really, the library.  Its benefits are that by getting out of the house which can often get the creative juices going.  It also helps because obviously there are a lot of resources in a library that can go beyond what you might find on the web.  It may be on the web, but you might not find it.  Access to new material not only helps your frame of mind it will make your article better.

    But the web and the library are not the only places you can go for research and/or inspiration.  Would an interview help your story?  Would photos or illustrations help show your point?  Would a quote take your story from good to great?

    If you’re conducting research on the web, mix up your search engine inquisitions.  Ask a question, add dates, and ask the same question in a different way – anything to mix it up in order to produce materials in your search.

    See you with other great ideas next week.

• What do Visitors look for on your mobile site?

  • We’re sure you saw the reports last year that showed the hot spots of where people look on your website.  You remember the pictures, yellow, red and green splotches all over a web page.  Well, the group that conducted that study, Mediative, has followed it up with another study.

    For the new study Mediative monitored eye- and click-tracking  with 12 people aged 21 to 45.  They were asked to get a tattoo in each of several Canadian cities.  As described by Mediative:
    “Every participant in the study was given the same scenario as in the previous Google Places study – an imaginary road trip with stops in Hamilton, London, Winnipeg and Edmonton, with the task of choosing a place for a friend to get a tattoo in each of those cities based on the Google Places search results. From the participants in the eye tracking part of our study, we recorded each individual session, and then compiled the sessions to create heat maps that represent aggregate gaze data and supplement the qualitative findings.”
    Did you follow most of that?  Well here’s the part that can help you affiliate marketers (Remember, in this study the viewers were looking at a search page): 
    -    People start upper left and scan left to right, then down
    -    Visitor’s eyes, and thus their attention were held by photographs of the search subject.  In this case, tattoos.  They were also held by reviews.  Make sure that the photo works in a smaller, mobile format.
    -    Further, they looked for at least 3-star reviews.  They found that businesses that were not rated at the top of Google’s search could help themselves by having a three star review or better, since visitors were looking for that.
    -    Social signals are also important to getting a click.

    For more detailed information on the study go to:
    http://searchengineland.com/study-reviews-and-images-drive-clicks-in-mobile-109659

• Guest Writing Builds SEO

  • Becoming an expert in your field, getting your name in lights, or maybe just getting your name on some other sites helps to build SEO by building links, adding social mentions, etc.  It’s one of the  new methods used to secure SEO dominance.

    But what blogs and sites should you write for?  How do you go about setting those up?  There are many blogs that will accept your material, but quite honestly are read by only a few.  It’s a lot of work on your part, for not much in return.

    Eric Enge in an article for SearchEngineWatch offered the following tips on targeting sites:

    Start by asking yourself who you read in your industry?  But don’t stop there.  Do some research on Google and Bing to see if there are some you are missing.  He also suggests adding the phrase “guest post” to your search to see who accepts guest posts.  Check DMOZ and Technorati to complete your list.

    Don’t forget to check for larger sets of your particular industry.  For instance, in our industries of payday loans and insurance, look for blogs in consumer lending and personal finance planning.  Industries that are larger will have followers that are interested in our products too.

    In determining what content to write, study the site.  What topics would fit in with their current material?  If there is other guest material, what can you learn from that?  Is it of a particular topic or in a certain style?  This seems obvious to me, but let me point out the obvious – know what you know.  Don’t consider writing a post about something in which you are not an expert.  So, if a targeted site already has a lot of material on your topic, you might consider looking for one that doesn’t.

    Enge recommends not writing the blog in advance.  Pitch the idea, not the article.

    Your next step is actually contacting the blog operator/writer via e-mail.  Here’s a modified version of the Enge’s.

    Dear [Site Operator],
    I see that your site accepts guest posts from knowledgeable people in the industry.  I have expertise in [    ].  I have been writing my blog for 3 years, have won several awards and have guest written on [    and     ]. 
    I would be very interested in writing a guest post for you on the topic of SEO Improvement entitled “11 Ways to SEO Mastery.”  Some highlights include [    and     ]. 
    If this article appeals to you please e-mail me back and I will begin right away. 
    Thank you for your consideration.
    [Your Name]

    You will get a variety of responses.  Undoubtedly you will get at least one that says, “we’re not sure, please write it, so we can have a look.”  Assuming this is a reputable site, it is worth doing this.  All kinds of businesses have to do “spec” work to prove their worth.  Now you’re one of them.

    For those that reject your offer (not you; your offer) don’t e-mail them back.  “Maybe next time” is the way I look at it.
    Good luck.

• Overall Searches Drop; Google Included

  • Overall search engine use dropped 7% in February 2012 vs. February 2011. Google use (Google and AOL) dropped to 66.8% of total searches from 70.8% in that same time period.  Bing powered searches (Bing & Yahoo) rose from 29.2% in February 2011 to 33.2% in Feb 2012.

    Google also saw a drop from January when it captured 67.5% of all searches.

    Overall search engine activity fell by 1.9% February 2011 to February 2012.  The drop from January to February was 6.9%.

    It should be pointed out that 2012 is a leap year, so there were 29 days in February.  Therefore, the drops are somewhat worse than the numbers actually show when you compare 2012 to 2011.  But the 6.9% drop from January to February is not quite so bad since February had two fewer days.

    There are still numbers here for Google to be concerned about; if not concerned exactly, then at least apprehensive.  A .7% drop from one month to another might be explained by one factor or another, but a 4.4% drop in use from one year to the next is no small amount.  If I were bing I would be shouting to the rooftops.

    This writer has a tough time believing Google’s market share will go much lower, given the contracts that Google has making it the default search engine on numerous popular browsers.  But having said that, these are numbers that absolutely must be followed.

    Source:  Compete Search Engine Market Share Report

• Scams, Privacy Issues, Fraud Risks – OLA Issues Warnings

  • The rip-off artists are operating in full swing these days.  It’s hard to read a newsletter or a website without seeing a warning from some government agency regarding a scam or online privacy issue of some kind.  As a result, we thought it would be helpful to update you on three issues facing our industry and our customers.

    
    Telephone Collections Scams
    The payday loan telephone collection scam folks are back again.  The callers pose as agents of the federal government using fake agency names, such as the Federal Legislative Department, as representatives of a law firm, and even as calling from the FBI.  They claim to be making collections for agencies that sound legit.  The problem is they are not.
    The warning bulletin from the FBI says the callers “relentlessly call the victim’s home, cell phone, and place of employment in attempts to obtain payment and they refuse to provide information regarding the alleged payday loan or any documentation and become verbally abusive when questioned.”
    The new scammers have amped up their efforts though.  There are instances highlighted by the FBI, that the scammer came to the victim’s home and/or office posing as a process server.  They have also demanded that “delinquent consumers” obtain a pre-paid card to pay off the debt. 
    If you or someone you know is concerned that they are a victim of a scam or fraud, there are several courses of action:
    -    Contact your local law enforcement agency
    -    Contact your bank and credit companies
    -    If you have taken out and repaid a loan or if you currently have one open, contact the lender to make sure no actions have been taken
    -    File a complaint at www.IC3.gov

    
    Mobile Banking ID Theft
    Younger customers are warned to be more careful with their personal information.  As younger people are more likely to post personal information on social media, such as twitter and facebook, they tend to be lackadaisical about the information’s security; particularly on mobile devices.  And thus, they are the targets more of scammers.
    A recent study by Javelin Strategy & Research sheds some light on the issue of identity fraud.  11.6 million adults were victims of fraud on 2011, compared to 10.2 in 2010.  But, the total fraud cost in 2011 was 18 billion, which is actually lower than in 2010.  The decrease in total dollars is attributed to better and faster security measures.  Consumers receive warnings from their financial institutions faster than ever before and consumers are better educated about the process.
    The study issued strong warnings about the kind of information you post on social media.  70% of consumers posted birthdays with months, day and years.  More than 60% posted high school or college names and more than half posted their e-mail addresses.  All of this information can be used by hackers to steal your identity. 
    Because 18 to 24yr olds have such a sense of security in using social media and mobile devices they have a false sense of security.  This leads to them being more likely to be victims.
    But, a caution to all of us.  Do not post personal information that can be hacked and used to steal your identity.
    
    White House Plan to Protect Online Privacy
    On Thursday, February 23, 2012 the White House proposed a “consumer bill of rights” to protect their privacy while online. 
    There are no immediate changes, but rather a set of guidelines to be considered by the Commerce Department, which is going to work with companies and “privacy advocates” to develop a coherent policy that will effectively protect consumer information while they are online.
    There are seven basic tenets to the plan:  Consumers would control the type of information companies collect; companies must be transparent about data usage plans and be respectful of the context in which is provided; companies must ensure secure handling of the data; there would be limits to what personal data is collected and retained, plus be held accountable for strong privacy measures; consumers must have the ability to access to their own data
    This comes at a time when it has been disclosed that Google, among other firms, has been collecting consumer data, even going so far as to bypassing other firms’ security measures.  All in an effort to build profiles and generate additional advertising revenue. 
    It seems certain that some plan will be developed and from an online marketer’s standpoint, it’s imperative that consumers feel confident that their personal information is protected and used for reasons they deem appropriate.  After all, if consumers are not confident in online security systems, that affects all online businesses, doesn’t it?

• CoTweet is Gone: Here are Some Alternatives

  • CoTweet, the popular FREE social media management tool is gone as of February 15.
    Sam Laird wrote about some free or low cost alternatives and here are the highlights.
    http://mashable.com/2012/01/21/free-cotweet-alternatives/
    1. HootSuite - We wrote about it here https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#social-media-monitoring-tools. It allows teams to monitor conversations and track the success of campaigns.  It’s free version can be used for up to five profiles and the Pro version is just $6 a month. 
    2.  Tweet Deck- This free app was bought by Twitter last year and is another favorite of social media managers and enthusiasts. Its organized columns, scheduling features and filtering capabilities give users a wealth of options.
    3.  Seesmic – A free app that allows for management of social tools across the strata of social media.  They have apps on every platform.
    4.  Involver – Has a free version that helps you build your brand on facebook. 
    5.  Social Sprout – Their web application integrates with Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, reporting, analytics and more – all in a package that's intuitive and easy to use.
    It doesn't have a free option, but does offer a Pro version that supports up to 10 profiles for $9 per month.
    6. Buffer – Buffer helps you share content easily and gives you analytics for every post you make.  It doesn’t do everything that CoTweet did, but you can schedule tweets and supports both facebook and twitter. 
    7. Group Tweet – Unlimited members can tweet from one account for free.  For $5 a month you get more features including custom filters.

• The Current State of Mobile Media

  • Nielsen Media has released its "State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report."  It provides some interesting insights into the market today and allows for interesting conjecture regarding the future. 
    The number of smartphone subscribers has grown 45% in the last year.

    In the 4th quarter of 2011, 26.3 million people watched a video on a mobile device.

    62% of smartphone owners have downloaded an app to their phone.  Of those 62%, the vast majority, 87% have used a “deal of the day” app, such as Groupon.
    Some other numbers of interest:  53% of adults aged 18-24 now own smartphones and 64% of 25-34 years olds do.  In the 3rd quarter of 2011, teens (13-17) received and sent the largest number of text messages.  A whopping 3,417 per month per person!

• UK Payday -- A Good Business Opportunity

  • It's no secret the payday loan industry  in the UK is booming. The nation's economy is still suffering, and many Brits who are faced with financial woes need a place to turn for fast cash.
    
    Many smart entrepreneurs are jumping into the UK payday loan corporations. This phenomenon is just not just restricted to the United Kingdom; UK payday loan retailers are appearing all through Australia, the USA, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America.
    
    Payday loan businesses rank among the most lucrative enterprises in the UK, whether you are a merchant that provides the loan; or a website publisher who generates the leads. Consumers are cahrged between £15 and £25 for every £100 borrowed. The UK payday loan industry generates about £50 billion a year in total revenue.
    
    In addition, affiliate marketing firms such as T3LEADS.COM offer extremely high payouts to online publishers who generate UK Payday leads.
    
    Of course, launching a Payday Loan operation will take some resources and management skill. There are also rules and business practices that you should adhere to in order to run a smooth operation. If you lack this kind of experience, you are probably better off developing a Payday Loan lead generation program.
    
    Either way, Payday Loans can be a successful business venture for many entrepreneurs in the UK.

• StumbleUpon for Affiliate Marketers

  • Bias alert for StumbleUpon!  I am a big fan.  Although I must admit that I do not interact by indicating thumbs up or down, nor post on facebook as they would like.  But, I do often e-mail pages I like and it is a good creative source for my article writing.  You can find great generic business articles and how-to’s that appeal to almost anyone in business.

    Here are some the greatest benefits to StumbleUpon:
    1.    Contrary to the way I described my usage above, it’s a good way to get your name and site out there.  You will get thumbs up’s and re-posts; just not necessarily from me.  By the way, while writing this article I realized that I need to engage StumbleUpon in a more direct way. 
    2.     It presents your competition in a different way.  Since you don’t have the Google search rankings to deal with when you type in your keywords or industry you want to search, you see far different results.  You really get a different look at the web by searching on StumbleUpon.
    3.    By receiving many thumbs-up (50-100) you can really help your SEO rankings. 

    StumbleUpon is a unique way to present online material and one that’s equally effective in disseminating your information as well as it is in providing an informational forum as well.

• More SEO and Ways to Improve

  • Google Panda is changing the game and if we admit it, it probably needed to be changed.  The end result is that the content on your site has to be engaging, original and geared to your audience.  No ifs, ands or buts about it, the link farms of the past are gone, or nearly so.  If you want to be a leader in your searches develop a plan to gather strong, relevant content.

    Design your site with natural backlinks.  Don’t bother with backlink shortcuts.  Google will figure it out and your site will be downgraded.  Take the time to develop the links naturally.  You do it by guest writing on other sites and having guest writers in yours, by asking readers to share your content and by writing strong releases.

    Searches that are personalized to the searcher will become a reality.  Several blogs have commented on the general unhappiness of many over this fact.  That’s because a system of personalized search can bump down sites that worked hard to build a solid site, in favor of one that matches a “personalized profile.”

    But the profiles aren’t going anywhere, and in fact will only become more important.  A further result of this is that you can expect advertisements, no matter where you are on the web, to become custom tailored to your search habits – all because of your personal profile.

    Take the time to have your site optimized for mobile and voice recognition, in addition to standard PC-style searches.

    Establish a presence on social media websites and maintain it.  Google has announced that this is a factor in their rankings, so if you don’t want other sites to leap over you, you need to place pages on facebook, goggle+, the new twitter brand pages and other sites as they pop up.

    Your ranking will grow as followers repost your material and comment upon it.

    Continue to look here for tips on SEO and ways to improve yours.

• U.S. Firms Impacted by India Privacy Law

  • It has been a growing trend in the U.S. for many years: the outsourcing of customer service and data processing jobs to India. But India has implemented some new restrictions regulating the transfer of data to the United States.
    
    This year, India enacted new Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules. The rules impact India companies that gather personal data.
    
    The rules mandate that no India-based firm may send personal consumer information to a third party outside the country, unless the company receiving the data can provide the high level of data security required under the India IT Rules. The private information includes:  passwords, certain health conditions and medical records; and sexual orientation.
    
    What does this mean for online retailers in the U.S.? American firms that obtain this kind of data from Indian companies must adhere to Indian privacy regulations if they want to continue receiving the data. The regulations also may apply when information is collected about non-Indian residents.
    
    Needless to say, companies doing business with Indian customer service firms need to make sure they are in compliance with the nation's IT Data Rules.

• Twitter Offers Brand Pages

  • Just about a month after Google+ introduced brand pages, Twitter announces their effort.  Only 21 companies have access so far, but they include such big-name companies as American Express, Best Buy, bing, Coca-Cola, Disney, GE, Pepsi and more.

    According to an article in Ad Age Digital, these companies are crafting “content strategies to take advantage of the platform.”  It’s easy for media companies like Disney who are currently running a movie trailer, but other companies are looking for different ways to use Twitter to their advantage.  Hewlitt-Packard plans to use customer tweets on their page, while General Electric has a video of “140 Things We Made Yesterday at GE” airing. 
    Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages had the following to say, "[Twitter] is starting to take tentative, but very interesting steps into being more of a destination instead of just a conversation platform," said Mr. Singh.

    Mr. Singh also noted that Twitter's advertising products can serve a function that's complementary to brand pages.  For instance, a promoted tweet teasing the news that a person of interest will be talking about Pepsi during a commercial break on "The X Factor" could link back to the brand page, which would provide the answer. The promoted tweet will appear auto-expanded to let visitors instantly see the photo or video.

    The new design also allows brands to separate “@ replies” and “mentions.”

• Google Pays Apple how much to be the Default Browser on Safari?

  • According to Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter, Google pays Apple $1 BILLION to be the default search engine in Safari.

    In a note obtained or released March 9, 2012, Schachter voices the opinion that Apple seems to be shifting away from Google.  The basis of this opinion is Apple’s shift away from Google Maps.  We’re not sure that constitutes a trend, but let’s imagine a world where Google is dropped from Safari on Apple devices.

    Jay Yarow in an article for Business Insider posits that this would not be a huge blow initially.  In the note Schachter believes that Google searches on Apple devices resulted in $1.3 billion in revenue.  So, Google makes about $300 million from the searches.  Schachter uses Google public records as a source for the numbers.

    Yarow goes on to speculate that Google would be in trouble in time, if Apple abandoned them.  He bases that on the fact that it looks like iPad sales will surpass PC sales in the coming years.

    There’s no doubt that in the long run, if Apple dropped Google it would be a major blow to Google.  Even if Google is a superior search engine to bing, or other search engines, being the default tool will ultimately account for the vast majority of searches conducted.  Whoever is in the default position will ultimately be the leading search engine.

• 5 SEO Tips; 15 Minutes

  • Josh McCoy in a recent article for Search Engine Watch presented 5 great tips for improving SEO that take 15 minutes or less.
    http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2144010/8-SEO-Tips-That-Take-15-Minutes-or-Less?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=web

    1.    Review your Robots.txt file to make sure that you are not withholding pages, images, etc. from search engines.  Further he suggests running a tool such as Screaming Frog to see if you have pages you are excluding via a meta robots tag.

    2.    Review your site Organic Click through rate page by page.  He recommends your revise your worst pages title element and meta description.

    3.    Do your site pages exist at www.example.com and example.com?  If so, you should create a permanent 301 redirect driving all non-www. pages to the www. versions of your site.  Search engines don’t want to see two versions of your content.

    4.    Review your most frequently linked pages with a tool such as http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/  Make sure you don’t have popular pages that have been dropped from the server; also, you may have a heavily linked page has been temporarily redirected – it may need permanent redirection.

    5.    Review the site for duplicate titles with Google webmaster tools.

    Hopefully a few minutes each day on one of these tips will help the T3Leads affiliate network become even stronger.

• Facebook to Launch “Subscribe” Button for Websites

  • Techcrunch and Mashable articles reported that Joanna Shields, VP and Managing Director for Facebook Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), announced that the company is planning to roll out a “Subscribe” plugin for all websites. 

    The plugin will allow a website’s visitors a one-click way to begin following all of the news from an individual reporter, public figure, politician, celebrity, or anyone else who wants to post public updates via their Facebook user profile.

    The feature will only work for users have enabled “Subscribe,” which began operating in September 2011.  It acts very much like the “Follow” button on Twitter.

    This is only news because this is Facebook and it shows that they notice Twitter and are designing a feature that was a Twitter feature alone.  May it be as easy to use.

• Great Titles: They Have Sound

  • Dan Shure wrote a great column for seomoz.org and we’d like to share parts of that with you. 
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-your-titles-irresistibly-click-worthy-viral

    
    Great titles are important to gaining attention, preparing your reader for what they are about to read and of course, in SEO, the challenge of a great title is incluing keywords in a creative way.

    Shure gives 7 ingredients to a “Click Worthy” title:  curiosity, benefit, emotion, tangible, appearance, sound and expectation.
    1.    Curiosity:  Self-explanatory really, but a good title should make the reader ask How? Or Why? Or in general, want to learn more. 
    2.    Benefit:  Does the title portend of some important information you just can’t live without?  If so, your title is doing its job.
    3.    Emotion:  Your title can be funny; it might even make one say, “no way.”  Good titles conjure emotions with strong verbs and unexpected word combinations.  See the title of this article for example.
    4.    Tangible: Shure recommends making a title tangible. Provide a clear communication regarding what the reader can expect to find. 
    5.    Appearance: Not too long, not too short.  This rule carries far more weight when you’re writing a title for SEO purposes than when you’re attempting to attract readers.  Having said that a title that physically fits into the medium in which its being presented is a good thing.  Six to eight words titles seem to fit the bill more times than not.
    6.    Sound:  I know what you’re thinking.  Really?  Some people “hear” the titles as they read them.  Does your title sound good?  Both Shure and I love alliteration.  Plus, it sounds great.  If the title rolls off the tongue in a gentle fashion it’s an added bonus.
    7.    Expectations: Deliver what you promise.  No one will forward, like or in any way interact positively with your content, if your article does not follow the title.

    Keep working with titles and we hope these hints helped (like the alliteration?) 

• Twitter’s New Design

  • Twitter has a new design that went live on December 8.  It has rebranded several of its major features including “hashtag”: which is now called the “discover” tool.  It wants to link its service to the notion of “home” and have that be essentially the same whether you are viewing on PC, tablet or mobile.  As well as the same on iPhone or Android.

    Home is your personal collection of Tweets, the place you view tweets from the people you follow and contains the latest information from those you choose to follow.

    The redesign will also allow users to easily view pics, video and re-tweets.  It highlights the information that you have deemed most important, by providing easy access on the left side.  Photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in tweets, so you have all the information at a single glance.

    Twitter seems to have listened to users and undertaken this redesign with how they use, and want to use Twitter to heart.

• YouTube and SEO Success

  • YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.  Do we have your attention?  You should be adding video to your sites, and creating a YouTube channel of your own if you want to get ahead and stay ahead in SEO.

    Yes, there are other places to host your video, but in this world in 2012, considering YouTube is a Google property, it just makes sense to go with the two big boys.

    You should first set up your profile with an over view of your channel and tell users what to expect.  Next, you should link your social profiles.  This presents no problem with twitter, but you should be aware that Google+ will automatically link the Google+ account that is connected to your YouTube account is attached to.  Also, the facebook link only allows you to link to a personal page, not to a business page.

    There is a section of the profile page where you can link to any pages you wish.  It is from here that you can add links to your facebook business page.

    There are three tabs at the top of your channel page.  Featured, Feed and Videos.  The Feed tab shows all of your activities on YouTube.  The Videos tab of course shows all the videos you have downloaded.  The Featured tab shows videos of your choosing, first a primary one, then a playlist of other videos below.  All of these pages are customizable to fit your needs.

    To change your channel settings click the “Edit Channel” button on your homepage.  Keep the appearance simple and clean so it will look good on all devices.

    The Info and settings tab here is the same as the one you access from the homepage.  You can insert tags that summarize your channel.  Here you should focus on keywords to aid with SEO.

    The Featured tab allows for you to make adjustments to your homepage.

    There is a settings button that is very important to explore.  This can be found on your channel page.  Access to this can be found in the top right hand corner of your main page.  The sharing options allow you to control how your activity on YouTube is presented and your connected social channels.  It’s certainly in your best interest to decide what you want to be public and what you want to be private.

    Once your channel is up and running, make sure you take advantage of YouTube analytics.

    Here is the original inspiration for the article:  http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/set-up-your-youtube-channel-for-seo-success-14647

• Mobilize Your Website

  • If you have not mobilized (the process of making your website mobile-device friendly; otherwise known as creating an app) your website it is time.  Estimates tell us that 70 to 80 million people in the US have smartphones.  And they use them constantly.  Just look around you.  If you’re not mobile ready, you are losing business.

    There are more numbers to consider.  42% of those smartphone users are between the ages of 18 and 34.  If you depend upon that age group for your business to succeed, get your mobile app in gear.  So, if you are one of our payday loan associates, pay particular attention, as this group is a significant target market for you.

    Here is a list of inexpensive sites where you can help mobilizing:  Preswsly, MoFuse, Winksite, Zinadoo, MobiSiteGaloore, WPtouch Pro and Mobify.

• Video Content for Blogs

  • The rules for good SEO content get more challenging every day, don’t they?  One of our goals is to sort through all the noise and help you generate good content that results in higher search engine rankings.  With help from Elisa Gabbert and Search Engine Journal here are a few suggestions.

    Rather than write another article using a set of keywords, try producing a video.  Not all keywords lend themselves to video, but you’d be surprised how it easy it can be.  You don‘t have be Steven Spielberg, but give your video care and effort.  At least for now, videos make it easier for you to achieve rankings; often first page rankings.

    Don’t forget to create a YouTube profile and give the video a strong title and tags. In fact we have written an article this week that addresses that very issue.  Click here to read.

    Gabbert also suggests updating an old page, rather than creating a new one.  This is by no means a hard and fast rule, but the idea is a strong one.  Before starting on a new keyword, look back to make sure you have done the best you can do with some older ones.  Often times, your older pages will have links, likes, etc. that when updated will actually help you rank higher than a fresh, new page will.

    Do a group interview instead of a single person.  Gabbert points out the advantages:  group interviews are great for link building and generate a lot social sharing and search traffic.  A strong group interview will help to generate a dynamic and in most cases a more interesting video.

    If you plan on appearing in your own videos and are nervous about doing so, practice by yourself.  Practice looking right into the camera.  Your job is to make the camera something you are not afraid of.  Force yourself to look at your own videos.  The more you do this, the more confident and thus better, you will become.  Good luck.

• FTC to Hold Public Forum re: Online and Mobile Disclaimers

  • The Federal Trade commission (FTC) will hold a public workshop on May 30, 2012.  The purpose of the forum is to consider new guidelines regarding online advertisers and disclosures.  In the FTC press release they say the workshop will cover, “revising the Dot Com Disclosures so they illustrate how to provide clear and conspicuous disclosures in the current online and mobile advertising environment. Any revisions will be consistent with the goals of the original guidelines and will continue to emphasize that consumer protection laws apply equally to online and mobile marketers, and to other media. The FTC began seeking input for revising the Dot Com Disclosures guidelines last year.”

    Topics might include:
    •    How can effective disclosures be made on new social media platforms and mobile devices given the limited space; both character length and physical size.
    •    Can disclosures come in a separate e-mail for instance?  Further, is it okay to send the terms of agreement or privacy policy on a later communication to be printed or downloaded later?
    •    How can disclosures that are made in the original advertisement be retained when the advertisement is aggregated (for example, on dashboards) or re-transmitted (through, for example, re-tweeting)?  
    •    What are the disclosure opportunities and limitations of hyperlinks, hashtags, click-throughs, etc.
    •    How does consumer use of mobile and social outlets affect the disclosures?  How does this behavior affect how consumers buy online?

    The FTC invites written suggestions for topics of discussion or original research.  In particular, the Commission invites the submission of realistic examples and mock-ups that can be used for illustration and discussion at the workshop. Individuals and organizations may submit requests to participate as panelists and may recommend topics for inclusion on the agenda.  The requests and recommendations should be submitted electronically to dotcomdisclosuresworkshop@ftc.gov.

    If you unable to attend the conference you may watch it live at FTC.gov.

• Lowering Your Website’s Bounce Rate

  • Kelli Shaver shared the following http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/lower-bounce-rate-tips/ and it has some solid information about a big concern for all of our websites:  Bounce Rate. 
    1.     Ad Placement Makes a Difference.  Let’s first acknowledge that Google has forced changes in this area that strongly affect ad placement and quantity.  They are downgrading sites that run ads below the fold, as well as sites that have too many above the fold.  Shaver’s recommendation regarding ad placement is to leave space between the ads and the content.  A visitor who clicks on an ad when they are trying to interact with your content may leave the site altogether.
    2.    Lazy-Load Third Party Content.  The more third party content you have on your site the slower it loads.  Slow loads are just like asking the visitor to leave.  Shaver suggests loading third party content via AJAX, so that visitors can access your site, while the third party info is loading in the background.
    3.    Website Layout.  Shaver specifically mentions establishing contrast between backgrounds and type so that your site is easy to read.  I take this even further to include layout of your entire website.  It’s 2012 and there’s barely an excuse for having a site that mind-numbing to look at.  Make them clean, easy to read and make it clear what you want the visitor to do.
    I’m going to mix-in several related suggestions here.  They relate to design, but can be expressed in one simple mantra:  Deliver what consumers are looking for where they expect to find it. 
    Don’t be cute.  Don’t overthink the process.  Clean and clear.  Make click tabs large enough for smaller devices.  Your message should be immediately obvious.  Don’t make the visitor have to look for their options.  They will bounce away.
    4.     Once visitors are engaged, don’t interrupt them with videos, flying content or other types of tricks that are distracting. 
    There are other items to consider when transferring your site to a mobile platform, with layout varying even from tablet to phone.  It is helpful to have an original PC site that is direct and clean, so that it transfers layout easily to the other formats.

• Do Unicorns and Magic Words Exist?

  • 
    Unicorns first.  If you’re under 5 years of age, unicorns exist.  Questionable thereafter.  As for magic words, let’s call this writer is a partial believer. 
    Words and their use can engage people on your site, they can make your AdWords generate additional traffic and that’s just the beginning of their power.  So using an article by Mel Henson on smartinsights.com as our starting point, let’s see if we can agree on some “magic words.”

    
    Yale University recently sent out a copywriting advice e-mail detailing what they think are the most powerful words in the English language. 
    1.     You
    2.    Results
    3.    Health
    4.    Guarantee
    5.    Discover
    6.    Love
    7.    Proven
    8.    Safety
    9.    Save
    10.    New
    These are indeed powerful, but certainly not the end-all list for every occasion.  I would even venture to say that the words new and save are barely believable anymore.  Painting with a broad brush here, but in some retail fields I would say those words are passé.  Words addressing technology and sexiness drive more people in certain circumstances than new or save.

    All of this depends on your target market.  Different words are attractive to different audiences.

    Henson’s advice, as well as this writer’s is to use them appropriately in the right circumstances.  And, don’t over use them. 
    1.     To attract attention.  They are good to use in opening paragraphs or in AdWords to attract initial attention.
    2.    Create trust.  Once you’ve got a visitor’s attention, sprinkle in words like guaranteed, results and proven. 
    3.    Call to action.  I’m not a huge fan of quick and hurry.  I feel like their trying to get me to do something I don’t want to do.  I prefer, “just 3 days left”, “offer ends”…
    Like most things in marketing, magic-word usage should be done in moderation and used to enhance and attract, not boast.  As for unicorns, the jury is still out.

• Google and Privacy

  • Google has another privacy-related lawsuit on its hands.  This one is from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and it claims that Google’s plan to consolidate its privacy policies violate an agreement already in place with the FCC.

    CDD says the new policies violate the FCC-Google consent decree because Google will not have to get direct consent before sharing user information.

    The complaint additionally alleges that the Google is misleading the public about the reasons for the consolidation.  The suit says Google is doing it for advertising marketing reasons and not for the ease of the customer experience as they are claiming.

    That’s not all.  CDD says that Google is not being upfront with how data collection, profiling and targeting practices could ultimately violate their privacy.

    “In particular, Google fails to inform its users that the new privacy regime is based on its own business imperatives: to address competition from Facebook' to grow its capacity to finely profile and target through audience buying; to collect, integrate, and utilize a user's information in order to expand its social media, social search, and mobile marketing activities ... and generally to expand its DoubleClick (advertising) operations," the complaint says.

    The issue of privacy is everywhere in the news these days and will continue to be until further standards that everyone agrees to are in place.

    We may be talking about privacy issue for a while.

• Social Media Update Ideas

  • At T3Leads we like to give pay per lead affiliates solid information to help you become more successful.  With that in mind we came across an article that gave hints for good LinkedIn status updates.  They are good ideas but they are good ideas across the spectrum of social media.  They are especially good for posts that have limited character length like LinkedIn. 
    
    “I don’t know what to say.” 
    We’ve all said that at one time or another, so here are a few ideas in response to that excuse, for not updating your status. 
    
    1.     Tell us what you’re working on.  Give us the most interesting item you’re doing that day.  Six months from now people will have a good idea of what you do because they’ve heard it from you first hand.
    2.    Share what you’re reading.  If there’s a blog or columnist that you find useful, share that with your audience.  Likewise, if you written something, by all means link to that.  Also, don’t be afraid to share your thoughts and opinions on industry ideas. 
    3.    Share a good quote.  This is a favorite of this author.  A well placed either insightful or humorous quote can have big impact on another person.  The better the quote the better the chance someone reading will pass it on.
    4.    Ask a question.  Begin a discussion.
    5.    What events are you part of?  Be it a convention, a seminar or on the right occasion, just a good lunch.  The work related items give numerous opportunities to tell people where you’re going to be, how it is and how it was.  In other words, you can post before, during and after the event and that’s ok. 
    6.    Occassionally…promote your product or service directly.  We’re all out there trying to make a living.  It’s okay to promote that now and then.  Every day is way too much.

• More Marketing Tools for Affiliate Publishers

  • Here’s our third and final installment of internet tools that can help affiliate publishers.  Below is a link to the previous article on the T3 site. 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#affiliate-lead-generation-marketing-tools

    Alltop
    Want to know what’s happening in the UK?  How about the latest in fashion?  Alltop is a magazine rack of sorts.  It’s topic-based directory lets you search for blogs, articles and the latest news on your topic.  They put it best:
    “The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer.
    This link uses a humorous illustration to display the differences between alltop and google.
    http://alltop.com/about/nuggets.php

    
    Klout
    Klout measures online influence.  As they explain it: “friendships and professional connections have moved online, making influence measurable for the first time in history. When you recommend, share, and create content you impact others. Your Klout Score measures that influence on a scale of 1 to 100.
    Klout’s mission is to help every individual understand and leverage their influence. Klout measures influence in Twitter to find the people the world listens to. It analyzes content to identify the top influencers.
    The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:”
        True Reach: How many people you influence
        Amplification: How much you influence them
        Network Impact: The influence of your network

    
    NutShellMail
    NutshellMail social media monitoring tools lets you organize, monitor, and interact with all your social networks from a consolidated email digest delivered directly to your favorite inbox on a schedule that you choose. Nutshellmail supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Ning.

    
    Mentionmapp
    Explore your Twitter network. Discover which people interact the most and what they’re talking about. It’s also a great way to find relevant people to follow. The visualization runs right in your browser and displays data from Twitter. Mentionmapp loads user’s tweets and finds the people and hashtags they talked about the most. In this data visualization, mentions become connections and discussions between multiple users emerge as clusters.
    It’s a bit messy to take in at first glance, but becomes more clear with practice.

    
    Samepoint
    SamePoint.com tracks millions of conversations, taking place across in blogs and social media sites. SamePoint converts discussions into web pages, or permalinks, and organizes them within a tag cloud. SamePoint can serve as the nexus where the conversations meet, providing a single place for all discussions on a specific topic.

    
    Wildfire Social Media Monitor
    Measure your performance. Glean insights about the growth of your social media fan base on the leading social networks. With daily tracking, you have visibility into growth trends small and large. Gauge your social media success against others in your industry by comparing your follower bases across the leading social networks. Alert system will inform you of meaningful trends and activity that’s relevant to your social presence.

• Link-Baiting as a Good Thing

  • Yes,” link baiting” is not a term used in a positive way, but darn it, when done right, “link-baiting” is a positive process for all concerned.  Megan Marrs recently wrote of this topic for complete.com.
     http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/16/guest-post-12-link-bait-techniques-for-catching-the-seo-big-bass/

    
    Here are some ideas to help you collect valuable links.

    1.    Infographics – I read an unrelated blog this week where the columnist was declaring the death of the infographic.  I want to meet her and call her Ms. Scrooge.  They are still fun, still effective in communicating information, and most of all, still work in getting your site shared.

    2.    Guest Blogging – By acting as a guest writer on other blogs and by inviting other writers to write on yours…you will drive additional and new traffic to your site.

    3.    Answer Questions – I love this idea, because I am not currently doing it.  If you know the answers to some questions, (they don’t have to be the big ones about life, just informative ones about insurance or short term loans) check out the question sections of Yahoo! And LinkedIn Answers.  Watch the traffic that will be coming to you.

    4.    Comics – Love this idea too, and again because I did not know about it.  Check out pixton.com where you can easily create comics for use on your site.  If you do a good one, again, you have a great chance to go viral, thus exposing more people to your site.

    5.    Write lists on your blog like this one.  They are very reader friendly.  Take what you want, ignore the rest.

    6.    Share data and statistics – Quick, easy to digest and very often helps you tell a story.  Statistics are very link-able.

    We hope these give you a few ideas for increasing links to your site, and maybe even adding yourself to some others.

    Yes,” link baiting” is not a term used in a positive way, but darn it, when done right, “link-baiting” is a positive process for all concerned.

     

• Google+ use down in January 2012

  • Time spent on Google+ went down for the second month in a row.  It didn’t seem possible but according to ComScore the average time spent on Google+ went down in January after December’s numbers were lower than November’s.

    Average monthly time spent on Google+ in January was 3.3 minutes.  It was 4.8 minutes in December and 5.1 minutes in November.  It was hoped that the increase in sign-ups to Google+ would help involvement, but so far that is not the case.  Google announced in January that they had reached 95 million users.

    By way of comparison, facebook’s 845 million users spend an average of 7 ½ hours per month on their site.

    Shares of Google stock fell about 1% after the announcement.  They have fallen 5.7% in 2012.  The company, which admittedly is a powerhouse, certainly has its share of challenges including, Google+, privacy lawsuits, additional governmental scrutiny, patent lawsuits….

    We’ll keep an eye on Google+’s progress and its possible role in future affiliate marketing plans.

• 14 Words That LOSE Money

  • We recently posted this article https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html that showed the 14 most powerful words to use in marketing. 
    So, what the 14 words NOT to use in marketing?  Let’s take a look:
    1.     Price        2.  Cost           
    3.     Sign: Use “Log In” instead
    4.     Buy.  Consider changing to “Add to Cart.”
    5.     Expensive    6.  Deal.  Try using “Sales” or “Specials” instead.
    7.     Sold.  If you use “sold out,” try “Out of Stock”
    8.     Charge.  Pretty obvious.  Change to “Billing Information” or “Credit Card”
    9.      Try.  Don’t say “try these other products…”  Use “Other items of interest.”
    10.     Bad.  Use “Incorrect login” or “invalid credit card number.”
    11.     Lose.,. For example “you can’t lose.”  Change it.
    12.     Complicated.  Even if you say it’s “not complicated.”  Instead say “Easy to use.”
    13.     Risk – No “risk free”
    14.    Obligation – No “no obligation”
    Write down this list and copy the best words from the previous blog and keep them in your wallet.  Refer to them every time you write and you will begin to see the results you want.

• Promote Your Blog for FREE!

  • There are a number of things you can do to promote your blog for free.  Many of you already know these things, but it bears reviewing for our newer affiliate marketers.

    Submit Your Blog to Search Engines - FREE
    In addition to Google, submit to Yahoo, bing, ASK and DMOZ.org.  Our Search Engine expert is a fan of Yahoo’s search directory.  Be advised that it does cost a couple hundred dollars a year, but we recommend it when you have the capital to do so.

    Leverage FeedBurner – FREE
    FeedBurner is a feed management system with numerous tools to help you to improve your site/blog’s performance.  Go beyond the initial setup.  Check out the “PRO” settings to get more insight into how your blog is performing.  Go through the tabs one by one to improve dissemination of your blog.  These are particularly good at promoting your posts via social media, which we all know, becomes increasingly important each day.

    Sign up for Google Analytics - FREE
    You pros know this, but beginner, this is a great way to improve your performance.  The service is free and provides you information on what articles are viewed on your site, how long visitors remain on your site, and even what pages they stay on the longest.  Nearly priceless information. 
    This site itself does not promote you, but the information learned from it will help you.

    Link to Your Blog – FREE
    Always provide a link your blog on all communication:  e-mail and even business cards if you still use them.
    When you comment on other people’s blog, leave your URL.     
    If you keep a LinkedIn or Facebook profile, be sure to add a link to your blog. Facebook also lets you import your blog’s RSS feed as “Notes” so they display on your Profile page.
    Here are a couple of free website submission tools to make sure your site is recognized the various search engines.
    http://www.submitexpress.com/free-submission.html
    http://freewebsubmission.com/

    Ping when you Post – FREE
    If you’re not sure if your blog platform pings aggregators and syndicators when you post, check your documentation (most good blog platforms do this automatically, such as WordPress and Blogger).
    FeedBurner also has a ping service. Be sure it is activated, and take advantage of their offer to let you specify more sources to ping.

    Participate in the Greater Blog Community – FREE
    Yes, at heart there is a bit of a selfish motive here, but the process helps both parties, so why not?  Interact with other people’s blogs and hopefully they will do the same for you.  This helps you get exposure with the author of the blog, and his/her visitors.

    Hopefully these suggestions will help you to improve the performance of your site/blog.

• Who’s Using Google+?

  • In demographic statistics released by Flowtown, here’s a breakdown of who’s using Google+.  Take a good look at these numbers payday loan affiliates, and see if your customer is here.  If they’re not, ask yourself if pursuing a presence here is worth your time.  These numbers represent the audience as of Nov. 20, 2011.  As there was some decent growth by the channel in December, it will be important to see how these numbers evolve over the next month or two.  But, here’s what we know:

    63% of users are male and 58% are adults aged 18-34.  Bump that to 18-44 and the number is 73%.  The single largest cell is men aged 25-34 at 22%.

    A surprising 18.3% make less than $30,000 and 26.9% make between 30K and 60K.  Stated in a different way, 45% of the Google+ audience makes $60K or less.

    Two numbers that should be of concern to Google according to this study are that only 17% of users were considered “active and frequent.”  The vast majority, 83%, were considered inactive.  These are very key numbers to keep an eye on for the future.

    Google+ brand pages appear to be catching on to a certain extent.  Or maybe companies feel because it’s Google they need to create one.  Whatever the reason, 61 of the top 100 brands had a Google+ brand page created within the first two weeks of the product launch. 

• Blogpost Ideas

  • Ron Jones, in an article for ClickZ suggested some very specific ideas to adding content to your website or blog.  These will in turn send more traffic to your site.  Before you post, keep in mind a couple of things. 
    When choosing material for your site(s) make sure it “fits” what you are trying to say and how you want to say it.  You should have a voice and your posted material should fit within that.  Don’t force material that doesn’t sound like “your brand.”

    Don’t forget your keywords.  Use these as a guide in choosing what subject matter to post.

    With that said, here are post suggestions: 
    Tips, or how-to’s

    White papers on topics of interest to your audience

    Little known facts.  This might also include quotes of interest to the community.  Relevant and timely statistics are included as well.  In short, specific bits of information that your audience would be interested in reading.

    Take polls and share results.  It’s so easy with Facebook, but you can do it on your blog as well.

    Cultivate guest writers and be a guest writer on their site as well.

    Guides that educate.  Could be books of interest from other authors, could be how-to’s written by you.  .pdf’s , make this so easy.

    Interviews.

    Photos and videos

    News about technology or other topic of interest

    Events you attended.  Could be affiliate summit or other type of affiliated trade show.

    There is plenty of material to be developed that would be unique to your site.  And in most cases, it costs you nothing.  Take the time to plan your content.  It is vital to your success.

• Social Media Monitoring Tools for Affiliate Marketers

  • http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ZelSE/www.tripwiremagazine.com/2011/07/social-media-monitoring-tools.html/
    Dustin Betonio  amassed a list of Useful Social Media Monitoring Tools for TripWire Magazine that is quite extensive and sure to include a couple you have never heard of.  We’ll review the list over the next couple of weeks, so keep checking back.

    Radian6:  By using metrics, measurement, sentiment and analytics reporting, Radian6 reports to you how social media is impacting your business.  Of particular interest, is their “analysis dashboard” which allows you to see what people are saying about you on the web.

    Addict-o-matic: The main page shows you the hot topics of the day, then there a place to type in a search.  I typed in “insurance” and was given links to articles on various insurance topics.  It included links from bing, google, twitter, flickr, wordpress, wikio, ask.com and more.  Interesting search device.  It felt right if I was brainstorming a certain topic.

    Social Mention & StepRep: Receive daily e-mail alerts of your brand, company, people of interest, competitors and more.

    Twazzup:  Want to know what people are saying about you on twitter in real time?  Here’s the tool.

    Sysomos:  Owned by MarketWire, the press release distribution network.  Gathers data about what people are saying about you and who they are.  Results are instantaneous.

    Hoot suite:  Bills itself as the “leading social media dashboard.”  You can manage multiple social profiles, schedule messages and tweets, track brand mentions and analyze social media traffic.

    Beevolve:  Another social monitoring platform.   They claim they are the most affordable.  They are one of the few to even mention price, so they may be going after those of us on a budget.

    How Sociable:  Uses a scoring system to measure your visibility on LinkedIn, facebook, myspace, dig pages and more.

    Twelvefold Media (formerly BuzzLogic): An ad placing platform that targets your ads to consumers by delivering the right ad in the right place at the right time.  If it works as they say, it’s an interesting and quite possibly profitable advertising platform.

    More to come next week…

• What is SEO in 2012?

  • Gabriel Gervelis wrote the following article for SearchEngineJournal and it uncovers a trend that all affiliate marketers should follow.
    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/is-seo-really-seo-anymore-index-search-down-50-apps-and-social-search-exploding/40829/
    Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know the importance of incorporating social media into your SEO efforts.  No additional lecture required here.

    
    But modern day search is more than that.  It is in fact changing before our very eyes.  According to Gervelis, traditional, index search is down 50%.  Search is growing on sites such as Wikipedia, StumbleUpon and other popular content sites.  They are searching app stores too.  To date, Apple reports over 25 billion downloads, with over 500,000 available.  Consumers have moved past sifting text links on page after page.

    Further proof – the second largest search engine is YouTube.  Search is changing.  It is becoming more about engagement and less about lists.  Do you have an app that engages?  Do you have an app that takes into account the way a mobile user might be using your site, versus, how a desktop user might be suing it?

    So what does all this mean?  Gervelis has this to say, “Will search engine optimization experts like myself continue to focus on the results listings of Google, Yahoo and Bing? Or will we adapt our talents to the changing needs of the consumers and the businesses that we represent? Where will our clients turn when they no longer need to be #1 on Google, rather, #1 on the app market.”
    “And if we do, are we still “search engine optimization” experts? Or should we be ditching the “SE” in “SEO” and replacing it with something else?”

    The ultimate question is, are you providing the necessary information to your consumer how they want it?

• Web Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

  • If you’re just starting out in your new career as an affiliate marketer, there are a few things you can do to help increase the number of visitors who come to your site.

    With the help of Lee Odden from a column in small business newz here are some suggestions.

    First schedule a day of the week or at the very least, make the commitment to post weekly.  Your posts can take the form of articles, or even better, videos.  You should create a blog on your site to house the material.  Now what you ask?  What should I write about?

    Start by asking yourself a few questions:  Why do current customers buy your product?  Reinforce those thoughts.  What are the misconceptions about either your specific business or the industry overal?  Use this as an opportunity to educate your audience.  What information will convert a looker into a buyer?  It may be testimonials, it may be proof of product effectiveness, and for payday loans it may be insuring security and privacy, as well as company reliability.

    Use these answers as a guideline to developing content.  Use the Google AdWords tool (it’s free) to identify the keywords that are most important.  Make sure you use these keywords in your titles, descriptions and tags.

    If you don’t have a video camera use your Smartphone.  Use iMovie for editing on the Mac and Windows Movie Maker on a PC.  A simple way to start with video is to use the interview technique.  Interview or have yourself interviewed answering a question of importance to your audience.

    Start a YouTube channel and take the time to connect with other channels and video publishers.  After you post a video, share this fact on social media and with your e-mail list.

    You can allow for comments on your blog.  If you do, make sure you respond to every comment.  This is a lot of hand holding, but if you’re just starting it can be an effective way to convert readers into buyers.  The comments will also alert you to topics you need to address with your content.

    And finally make sure you set up web analytics so you will be able to tell what content is working and what isn’t.

• Reasons Consumers Drop Brands on Facebook, Twitter and E-Mail

  • Some of your customers have dropped you from facebook, twitter or unsubscribed from your e-mail list.  Do you know why?
    Exact Target-Co Tweet does.  The reasons most often given are frequency of messaging (too much) and lack of relevance.   In a recent report here are the top reasons for dropping out of the following:

    Facebook:
    - The company authored too many posts (44 percent);
    - Their wall became glutted with marketing (43 percent);
    - Their messages were repetitive and boring (38 percent);
    - Their posts were overly promotional (24 percent);
    - The content was irrelevant from the start (19 percent).

    Twitter:
    - The messages were repetitive and boring (52 percent);
    - The tweet stream became inundated with marketing (41 percent);
    - The company tweeted too frequently (39 percent);
    - The tweets were overly promotional (21 percent);
    - The content was irrelevant from the start (15 percent).

    E-mail:
    - Messages were sent too frequently (54 percent);
    - The content became repetitive and boring (49 percent);
    -There were too many e-mails were being sent by the brand (47 percent);
    - The messages were irrelevant from the start (25 percent);
    - The user subscribed purely to get a one-time offer (22 percent).

    Not a bad starting outline for determining what and when to communicate with your consumers via social media.

• The Ultimate Social Media Dashboard?

  • A new tool called Engagio released February 15th with the goal of becoming the dashboard of social media.  The idea was to make it like g-mail, but for social media.

    It works like this:  Engagio links user’s accounts from twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Tumblr, as well as Foursquare and web forums.  It collects comments, replies, messages and updates and publishes them to a single box.  The user is able to post any responses back to these services as well.  Engagio is planning to add support for other social services, including Quora and additional forums on Stack Exchange.

    It certainly would be beneficial to have communications from social media channels come to one, easy to manage location, as opposed to being bombarded via e-mail by each individually.  And I can easily see the time that could be saved with this tool as well.  No switching back and forth between the channels.  Log in to one place and peruse the board, respond and you’re done.  On first glance, this would certainly seem to be a convenient and time saving tool for the social media user.

    To check it out yourself go to: http://www.engag.io/welcome

• Reasons to Consider Becoming an Affiliate Marketer

  • Before jumping into affiliate marketing and expecting to make your first million in six months, consider a couple of things.  Have a strong interest in the affiliate program you choose, because you’re going to be working in it every day.  Make sure you love it.  Second, have a commitment to the long haul and doing the little things you need to do in order to achieve the success you want.  Lecture over.  Here’s why affiliate marketing may be the path for you:

    You don’t have to invest money

    For those with limited funds, but lots of time, affiliate marketing is perfect.  You don’t have to stock shelves or invest in numerous employees.  You need no start-up capital.

    You don’t have to create a product

    Since you don’t have a physical product, you don’t have to create a product, nor do you have to pay for storage, transport and other costs associated with a physical product.

    You don’t even have to have a website of your own

    The good affiliate programs will have websites available for you to use.  To get started with the least amount of cash outlay, write some articles about the product include your affiliate link that takes the user to the product’s sales page and submit them to article directories.  These same articles can be used to build a web page using free web 2.0 properties.

    You don’t have to deal with payment processing

    The merchant does all payment processing.

    You don’t have to deal with shipping, handling or returns

    No doubt about it.  Shipping is a headache.  Shipping out.  Returns coming back.  It’s all a headache.  With an affiliate program you don’t have to worry about that.

    These are very strong reasons to become an affiliate marketer.  But check out what other people have to say about it.  Inquire through your favorite search engine and you’ll find a plethora of quality information about the field.  If you decide affiliate marketing is for you, welcome to the business.

• Improving Your YouTube Performance

  • Amy-Mae Elliott in a column for Mashable presented these tips for improving YouTube performance. 

    
    1.     Share YouTube content on other social networks without being hooked up to them.  To manage these options, click on your username at the top right of YouTube, then "Settings," then "Sharing."
    2.    You can change video resolution with the click of one button in the bottom right hand corner, and you can change your settings to always play in HD with going with full-screen.  Go to Playback Setup, then Settings.
    3.    Manage your viewing history with a couple of easy clicks.  Look under Video Manager after clicking on your username in the top right corner.  Add them to Favorites, delete them or watch later.
    4.    A couple of search refinements have been made.  By adding HD to your search, you will get high-definition results and the same for 3-D.  Adding today, this week or last month will aid in narrowing down the content.  Add short and it will display videos under 4 minutes. 
    5.    Customize your captions in the following way:  When watching a video, click on the CC icon, then choose settings. 
    6.    Introducing “You Tube Slam.”  Scroll down to the bottom of any YouTube page and click try something new, then select You Tube Slam.  It’s a battle of the videos in different categories, such as cute, comedy or bizarre.

• Social Media Optimization

  • Making your social media search-engine-lovable is not much different than designing your website.  Identify your keywords , then create content taking advantage of those.   To drive traffic to your website, you optimize content so the search engines can find you.  Social media is roughly the same, except you’re trying to pull users to you with compelling content they will want to share. 
    Tara Jacobsen in an article for Marketing Artfully, offers the following tips for optimizing facebook, LinkedIn and twitter.

    Facebook Optimization
    Be sure to fill out your current city, hometown and interests.  This is one of the ways people will find you. 
    You should fill out Notes on your personal profile and business page.  These notes are indexable by Google, so make sure to add hyperlinks to your website. 
    Don’t get too cute with your business page.  Solid names and links will make you easier to find, and ultimately will rank higher.  A custom facebook business page containing multiple pictures with descriptions using keyword phrases will help you to rank higher as well.

    LinkedIn Optimization
    Her first recommendation stresses the importance of current occupation.  List your various job functions as a separate job.  For example, I might have copywriter, marketing consultant and SEO consultant. 
    Completely fill out areas of information including previous jobs and areas of specialty.  If there are industry fields in which you have a lot of experience, by all means list them.  Hobbies that you have a strong level of knowledge?  List them too.
    Use your real e-mail so people can find you.

    Twitter Optimization
    Put in your location by city and state.  Make sure you link to your website.  People will check out your site. 
    Fill your bio with keywords.  Your occupation should be what users will be searching for.

    We all have friends who love to re-post everything.   Sometimes we wish they would stop, but other times, when they re-tweet out posts for instance, we love them.  Post items of interest that people will want to re-post.  This obviously pertains to all social media.

• Putting Google Analytics to Work

  • Meghan Peters in http://mashable.com/2012/01/04/google-analytics-guide/, offered the following as an updated list of tips to get the most out of Google Analytics. 
    Google Analytics product manager Phil Mui says the design reflects three core metrics: acquisition, engagement and outcome.

    Acquisition
    Or better described as stats about visits/visitors.  The who and what of your visitors has readily been available, but Google has now added mobile statistics.  These can be found, along with most visitor statistics under the Audience tab.

    Engagement
    What do visitors do once they get to your site?  There are only a few choices.  Go to another page, stay on the one they’re on or leave.  These new metrics tell you what users do when they come to your site and whether or not you’re any good at keeping them there.  They do it by measuring pages per visit, average time on site and bounce rate.  This is the number of people who only visit one page on your site.  A high bounce rate indicates that your site is not delivering what visitors are expecting.

    Outcome
    So what’s the end result of all the visits to your site?  After you enable goals in Analytics in the accounts settings page, you can choose one of four to track. 
    First define if your site’s goal is to have visitors buy something or is to get them to sign up for a newsletter or other such action.  Once you know your objective, you can choose what outcome you want to study.  Choose from URL destination, time on site, pages per visit or events, which tracks specific actions that visitors are taking on a specific page.

• More Reasons for Using Google+

  • With the help of Mashable, in an article that originally appeared for American Express OPEN forum, here are some pros and cons in the Google+ debate. 
    •    Getting an SEO boost.  As social media, sharing your material on Google+ will aid in your SEO efforts.  The fact that it’s a Google product can’t hurt either. 
    •    By hosting a “hangout” businesses can interact with clients/customers in a personal way.  It also offers an opportunity to for employees in remote locations to hold meetings and share materials. 
    •    The people currently on Google+ are “early adopters.”  In the classic marketing model, these customers are key as they drive the idea/product/market desire, etc.  They will more than likely be early adopters for all things; not just technology and media channels.  This makes them a very key group to meet for almost every business. 
    •    As reported in previous T3Leads articles, one of the unique features to Google+ is the ability to segment your markets.  You can divide your audience into groups, thus allowing you to share information exclusively with those groups. 
    •    Getting in on the ground floor.  There is speculation, well, about everything, but in this case, there is speculation about the plans Google has for the channel and how it will affect their other products.  Obviously there are/will be SEO considerations, but there is probably more.  What exactly is the future of search when combined with social media; and vice versa? 

• SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) Dead…for Now

  • It has been announced by House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor R-(VA) that SOPA, H.R. 3261, has been tabled for now.

    This comes after blog postings from the White House in which they said, “while we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk, or undermines the dynamic innovative global Internet.”
    “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses, large and small,” according to the blog.

    The Senate bill known as the Protect I Act, also seems to be on hold, after the realization that it as well as the house bill are flawed.

    The pressure from companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla and Yahoo! Had more than a little bit to do with the bills’ suspension as well.

    The Internet blackout was still held on Wednesday, January 18, 2012.  Companies planning to participate include Wikipedia, reddit, MoveOn and Mozilla.

• Mobile on the Move

  • Your first order of business for 2012 is to get your site mobile-device ready.  Mobile browsing set a record in December 2011 – 7.7% of total browser usage originated from a mobile device.  That number may inch down a little bit in January and February, but overall expect usage to continue to rise.

    There are definitely challenges to be faced in developing your site to be seen on various size screens.  If you are using T3leads products you will already be mobile friendly, but if not you have a lot of programming to be done.

    The good news is, it will be worth it.  More and more mobile products are being sold.  Record numbers, in fact.   PC and notebook sales numbers are not rising at the same rate.  Mobile is indeed the future. 
    In fact, NPD DisplaySearch released figures that showed almost 73 million tablets were shipped to stores worldwide in 2011, giving tablets a 25.5% share of the mobile PC market.  Interestingly, notebook shipments were up 12% from 2010 to 188 million units shipped.  The numbers also show that many users own both a notebook and a tablet.

    What this means for search is clear – although notebooks are showing resilient sales figures, their overall usage may be falling.  This means fewer searches on the notebooks and more from tablets and other mobile.

    In other numbers, Safari is still the number one mobile browser with 53% of the total usage.  Opera rose to 21.7% and Google’s Android browser stands at 15.9%.
    In the desktop market, Internet Explorer stands at 52%, Firefox at 21.8% and Chrome 19.1%.

• Does Your Web Design Hurt Your SEO?

  • Web Design and SEO are imperative for any successful affiliate marketer.  We have done a number of articles telling you how to improve SEO.  This article does the opposite and explores ways that your site as it is currently composed could be hindering your SEO efforts.

    The search engine crawlers should be able to read and collect information by crawling the page so that it will be indexed in the search engine. When the user queries for a particular topic, the search engine will be able to provide the information from the indexed pages.  So, it is obviously the responsibility of the web design engineer to create a SEO friendly website.

    Non-spiderable splash pages:  Some sites are designed with a splash page filled with banners prior to the web page.  The user clicks on one of the banners to land on one of the interior pages.  This is a bad idea because search engine spiders cannot find the embedded link.  There must be a link structure present that search engines can index.

    Overuse of Ajax technology.  Search Engines have a tough time indexing pages with Ajax content which is loaded in real time or dynamically.

    Unfriendly URL’s:  Search engines love URL’s that are easy to remember and use.  The over-inclusion of code in your URL’s will cause you big SEO problems.

• How to Make Facebook Work

  • So you’ve finally decided to set up a brand page on Facebook, or you’ve had one for a while and would like to see greater results.  Look no further.  Here is a list compiled by David Wallace for SmallBusinessNewz to make that happen.

    After creating your business page, choose a Facebook App Developer to create an app for your page.  Set your app as the “landing tab” for your page.

    Your app should have a clear call to action.  By the way, this is true of every bit of marketing you do.  It is not restricted to web apps.  If you don’t have a direct incentive to convince them to act, choose the greatest benefit to your product or service and sell that.  Consider putting a time limit on the offer.

    Keep in contact with the customers’ whose e-mail addresses you have collected.  I write the previous sentence purposefully.  Don’t forget they are individual people; not just a collection of the letters and numbers that make up their e-mail addresses.  There are special apps that allow you to communicate with these customers.  The customer gave you some very valuable information.  Use it wisely.

    Monitor your ads/postings with Facebook Ads Manager and fb Insights, both free.

    Test different ads.  The bottom line is some ads are better than others.  Find the best ones and take advantage of them.

    Communicate on your page on a regular basis.  Pick an appropriate length of time.   Do it once a week or twice a week, but remain constant. 

• The Crystal Ball Says… _______________ is in Store in 2012

  • It’s that time of year.  It’s the “end of year, list-making season.”  The best of movies, TV shows, facebook postings, YouTube videos, etc.  There are also lists of predictions for the coming year in the field of technology.  After perusing the articles, we’ve collected some of the more intriguing tidbits predicted for 2012.

    Erica Ogg of Giga OM collected these from British Digital Design Agency, Fjord. 
    1.    The use of consumer devices in the workplace will become more commonplace.  Employees are already using personal tablets and laptops because they have the installed software that they prefer.  By using programs such as Dropbox, Evernote and Skype, the way they use them at home, employees are more efficient. 
    2.    Wearable technology.  Fjord also thinks this will be a big trend.  They think as we do, that this will bring on a revolution in communication.  When you combine voice activation with digital jewelry, you begin to see a real “James Bond” experience on the way. 
    3.    Which leads us to the next “James Bond” experience – hands free and gesture-controlled interfaces.   It’s already happening in game technology, so how hard is it to imagine the use in our phones or other devices?  Thanks to Siri, voice control is here and will only grow.  The next area of exploration is naturally gestures and facial expressions.  It is Fjords’ prediction and recommendation, that smart companies get on board with new interfaces and modes of communication.

    Paul Sloan, in an article for Cnet News, sat down with Mark Andreeson, co-founder of Netscape and now partner in the Silicon Valley venture firm Andreeson-Horowitz.  They kicked around thoughts for 2012. 
    Andreeson predicts that software will continue to rule the world.  Our words, not his.  His exact words were, “software is eating the world.”
    “Software has chewed up music and publishing. It's eaten away at Madison Avenue. It's swallowed up retail outlets like Tower Records. The list goes on.”

    4.    His next predictions go hand in hand, literally.  The use of smartphones will expand to a point where most people on the planet will own one.  This ultimately will lead to the downfall of retail as we know it.  But, first things first.  A smartphone is a collection of software that fits in the palm of your hand.  Cloud engineering makes it possible to do almost anything from the palm of your hand.  Now think of that power in hands of the world.  Andreeson says in three to five years, 6 billion people will have smartphones.  The opportunity that provides for a Google or an Amazon is mind boggling.  Not to mention all the companies that have not even been formed yet.  After all, who heard of Google ten years ago?
    5.    He sees the rise of e-commerce continuing, and 2012 will be the year that traditional retail really feels the pressure.  He points out the example of Warby Parker, an online eyeglass e-tailer.  He calls it “software eats LensCrafters.”  Borders will not be the last big name in retail to go under. 
    6.    The technology is not just changing retailing.  He gives another example:  Uber.  “Software eats taxis.”  It’s a smartphone application that brings town cars to you.  You watch the car on a map as it makes its way to you.

    He also mentions Foursquare and how it is connecting people and businesses in a whole new way, that was totally impossible before smartphones.  He foresees people running not just their personal lives, but running businesses from smartphones. 

• Privacy Protection Act of 2011 Would Impact Cellular Carriers

  • U.S. Senators Al Franken and Max Blumenthal have introduced a measure that would restrict the ability of mobile device developers to disclose the location of a cell phone and tablet users.
    
    The bill was comes after recent news that mobile device providers and app developers were obtaining users' location data, sometimes without the user's consent.
    
    The bill also addresses the use of geo-location data in cases of interstate domestic violence and stalking. It calls for a study on the use of location technology in domestic violence and stalking cases, provides that such crimes will be reported to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, and requests that the Attorney General develop a training curriculum regarding the investigation and prosecution of such crimes for law enforcement, courts and victims advocates.
    
    The Franken-Blumenthal proposal would also provide for a private right of action for affected individuals and criminal sanctions for the development or dissemination of apps that knowingly and intentionally disclose geo-location information while knowing and intending that domestic violence or stalking will occur as a result of this disclosure and for the knowing and intentional aggregation and sale of the location data of children 10 years old and younger.

• How to Tell if, and Even When, your AdWords are Working

  • AdWords has many useful tools to help you learn what ads are working.  Are you taking advantage of them?

    Check out the “Dimensions” tab for instance.  It allows you to study the site traffic including seeing when the clicks occurred, the geographic location of the visitors, as well as key demographic statistics.  
    It also gives you a search report.  This report is extremely valuable as it tells you what people are typing into Google search that triggered the appearance of your ad. 
    This is valuable because it allows you to edit out the searches inquiries that you don’t want, by adding certain words as a negative keyword.  This allows you to target with precision the type of clientele you are looking for.

    The geographic feature will help you define areas of low production and also identify areas that might benefit from additional AdWords expenditures.

    Other reports of interest include conversions (breakdown by conversion name or purpose), Free Clicks, which shows you how people interact with different components of your ad, such as “get directions.”  It also has a Destination URL report which shows you exactly which pages the person ends up on.  It answers the question, “what is working?,” because in all likelihood you will have certain keywords sending people to certain pages on your site.

    From here, study your landing pages to see which are converting the best and revise the poor performing ones.

• Affiliate Marketers Love Twitter

  • In an article for Marketing Land, Lori Weiman of The Search Monitor breaks down the affiliate marketer’s love of twitter.   Begin with the fact that affiliates tweet a lot.

    According to the Search Monitor and Affiliate Benchmarks, between sixty and seventy percent of all affiliates use social media and almost half use twitter.  The fact that it’s free and easy makes it very appealing.

    One of the keys to success is using the proper hashtags.  Hashtags are similar to keyword usage in search engines.  A hashtag is used to organize your Tweets for Twitter search engines.  According to Webopedia, “users simply prefix a message with a community driven hash tag to enable others to discover relevant posts. One commonly used hash tag on twitter is #followfriday where users network by providing the names of their favorite people to follow on Twitter.

    By using hashtags a user communicates with followers of that hashtag without having them as followers.  This potentially makes for immediate response with many people despite having few followers. 
    We know affiliate marketers are smart, but how smart you ask?  Most affiliate marketers have multiple identities on twitter in order to repost to drive up a tweet’s popularity and to not be a pain in the butt in doing so.

    She points out two big reasons to monitor affiliate tweets.  The first is directed at affiliate managers.  By checking out affiliate tweets, you can recruit to your program.  Look for marketers with strong content.  Who’s out front with their tweets?  Find them and pull them into your program.

    As an affiliate you should check what products are being heavily promoted and look for gaps where you can take over.

    The key to strong social media results is learning the best usage for each media channel.  Facebook and YouTube become more defined all the time.  Google+ and twitter are new to the brand-page side of social, and thus are still evolving as to what the best use of them will be.  One of the best ways to learn how twitter will be useful is to follow twitter.  Simple, but effective advice.

• An Affiliate Marketer’s Guide to Writing Articles When You’re Fresh out of Ideas

  • I wanted to avoid using the phrase “writer’s block” but let’s just get it over with.  Sometimes affiliate marketers have writer’s block.  We write so much it’s inevitable that one day or another we’re going to come up short of ideas.  Here are some suggestions for generating ideas that will generate links and leads.

    1.    Find Your 10.  Go to your 10 favorite websites and find your 10 favorite articles and write a blogpost about them.  Tell us why they’re your favorite and specifically what you learned from them. 
    2.    Ask friends and colleagues for ideas.  Ask them what they want to read about. 
    3.    Ask your readers for column topics.  You’ll definitely get ideas.
    4.    Do an interview.  It’s easy as can be when conducted over the phone.  Target a columnist you respect or look for a young upstart. 
    5.    Ask for guest posts.  Not in an open forum, but via email.  As in #4 look for writers you admire and follow and ask them to write a guest column.  You should do this on a day when you have an idea, so that the column is ready to go on a day, when you’re fresh out of ideas.
    6.    Write a review of a product you love.  There are so many great gadgets these days and sites that cover them.  Check c/net and TechCrunch for great gadget ideas.  You can write about services too.  I could write a 1,000 word love letter to my DVR.
    7.    Tell us about a business success story and the story of a business failure.  Compare and contrast what you learned from each. 
    8.    Make a list of your favorite blogposts that you have written and tell us why you like and even the inspiration for them.  You can give an update on how the articles look three years later.  Were you a soothsayer or just full of crap?
    9.    I refer to sites such as StumbleUpon as free fall sites.  Type in some keywords and see where it takes you.  I always find inspiration here.
    10.    And finally, here are some ways to cleanse your brain to help get it in the mood for writing.
    a.    Go for a walk.  Honestly, it works.
    b.     Experience an event or place with lots of stimulation.  The theater, Chinatown in SanFrancisco.  If you’re not in San Francisco, and admittedly most of us aren’t, go to a colorful part of the town where you live.  Soak up the food, the sounds, the people.  When you’re back in front of your computer you’ll be surprised how ideas you sparked.  
    11.     Tell a story from your life; one that illustrates who you are.  Do you have a story that you think other people will get something from?  Readers may get inspiration from some challenge you’ve faced or learn about the kind of drive it takes to be an affiliate marketer.  If it’s honest and compelling, it will be shared with other people with the hope that your name and blog get additional exposure.
    12.    One last trick.  When you do have ideas write an extra article or two that are not time-sensitive, and keep them for a day when ideas are not as prevalent.

    We all get writer’s block.  The trick is to plan for it.  We hope this helps you do that.

• Smartphone Study Shows Mobile Ads Are Effective

  • A survey coducted by Harris Interactive for Greystripe (a ValueClick company) has revealed several business categories are experiencing success in branding themselves through smartphone advertising.
    
    The study polled 2,090 U.S. residents over age 18. It indicated the top categories for smartphone advertising include: entertainment, technology, retail and gaming.
    
    According to the research, more than 77 million Americans -- and 60 percent of smartphone users -- can recall a mobile phone ad.  And, among the smartphone users who can recall an ad, 67 percent (39 million) can rememebr the brand category.
    
    The most recalled brand categories among smartphone users are:
    
    * Entertainment - 39 percent
    * Tech - 36 percent
    * Retail - 32 percent
    * Gaming - 29 percent
    * Finance - 22 percent
    * Auto – 22 percent
    * Fast food restaurants - 19 percent
    * Consumer packaged goods - 18 percent

• Effective Landing Pages

  • You’ve gone through all the work to get a customer to “click here” and now they’re sitting on the landing page.  Does your page have the goods to finish the sale?
    1.    Does your headline directly apply to the previous page and the very thing that made the visitor click to the page in the first place?  Make it relevant and creative.  Most visitors will see this first.  It has to be good.
    2.    Design a landing page that is uncluttered and makes it clear what you want the consumer to do.  Do not give too many options.  Do not make the pages too long.  Think of a web page like a newspaper.  Do not put the call to action “below the fold.”  Don’t make the consumer have to scroll to find the call to action.
    3.    Do not fill up with copy.  Number or bullet the key points and be done.  Write copy that directly follows the headline.
    4.    Have an opt-in form that collects visitor names and e-mails, or whatever information you need to collect.  Be clear you will not sell their information and assure them it is safe. 
    5.    Design your site to be professional looking.  Have a common “look” to all the pages and have some element of a landing page designed into every page.  If you are unsure how you want your site to look, look at your competitors and check out web design sites.  It’s all out there.  Take advantage of the free resources available to you.

• Can Google Plus be a Plus for Your SEO Efforts?

  • As Google Plus is in the beta test phase, the buzz about the new social media product continues to build. Still, with over 20 million users in its test phase, should online SEO marketers begin to take advantage of Google Plus? Possibly.
    
    One benefit Google Plus will offer that Facebook and Twitter do not is the ability to follow links with high page rankings. In other words, links shared on Facebook and Twitter will not count toward your website's overall page rank. But, since Google pretty much control the search engine world, the Google Plus links will help to enhance your page rank. Therefore, online marketers can certainly gain some value from marketing through Google Plus.
    
    Clearly, Google Plus is still in its infancy stage. As the weeks and month pass by it will become more clear how marketers can take advantage of Google Plus; and how Google Plus will stack up compared with other social media sources as a tool for enhancing your website's search engine optimization.

• Links in Social Media: Definitions, Theories and Benefits

  • Social links do impact search rankings.  It’s just a matter of how much.  It’s clear that other elements have a bigger impact on rankings, but it’s wise to build social links and to keep building them.

    Let’s start with a definition of a social link.  Yes, it’s Twitter, facebook and google+.  But it’s many other places as well.  Eric Ward in an article for SES Magazine pointed out other sites such as “Delicious,” “StumbleUpon” and “Digg.”  There are social sites for hikers, photographers, cricket players, you name it.  All will play some role in the rankings of Google and other search engines.

    Ward also suggests that web-based forums and bulletin boards also are a form of social media and may have an impact on your ranking.  It would seem to make sense that if you manufacture tennis shoes, most links on sports sites of any type would have a positive impact on your ranking.

    Ward provides a good illustration about bad link building.  Is a follower of Ashton Kuthcer on twitter worth the same as a social link for a mining company?  Recognize what type of links are beneficial to you and recruit those types of links.  Don’t just collect links because you think it’s a good idea.  Like most things in SEO, harvest quality over quantity.

• Making Google+ Pages Work for You

  • Google+ now has reached a milestone of sorts – 65 million users.  It’s an amount that may make facebook giggle, but it’s also an amount not to be ignored.  Since brand pages are a growing, new part of the experience, let’s take a look at how to build an audience on the channel and ways to keep them.

    1.    Add Followers
    Place a Google+ badge on your website.  Send visitors from your site to your brand page.  You can drive this growth by beating your friends and employees over the head, (not really), to get them to share your page with their friends, neighbors, etc.  Like a bad cold, your followers will spread. 
    Like you do with facebook and twitter, use your ongoing advertising and marketing efforts to drive traffic to your page.

    2.    Sub-divide your Followers
    Google+ allows you to divide your followers into four groups:  Following, Customers, VIP’s and Team Members.  Use these to differentiate your audience into meaningful groups, so you do not waste efforts where they do not belong.  Lawrence Mak, product marketing manager at Context Optional, suggests segmenting your followers much like you do with your audience in ad placement. 
    These segments are called circles and they allow you to separate your followers into product usage categories.  Currently there are no demographic or geographic filters, but they are on the way.

    3.    Make a Distinction Between Social Media Postings
    You already know that twitter is best for short, humorous postings that may link to another source.  Facebook offers a mix of media and various types of postings that aim to keep people on Facebook.  It has not yet been determined the content that will flourish on Google+, but undoubtedly, it will.  Become aware of it.  This is important because you need to know how the users will “use” Google+ and what they will expect to see and hear from organizations like yours.

    4.    Use Google+ Features
    You have the ability to add photos, videos and links.  The more engaged users become with your post, the greater the viral effect, therefore leading to increased message/brand awareness.  Place the Google+1 button on your posts.

    Don’t forget all the products that Google owns.  YouTube, Picasa, Calendar, etc.  Use those to increase the value of interaction with your page.

    As with so many other experiences that are new, spend some time learning about the medium and in particular, how people use it.

• Interesting Data for Marketers

  • Most marketing professionals are always looking for tidbits of information that can assist them in their marketing efforts. Check out the following items related to mobile technology that could be very useful to e-commerce marketers:
    
    * Search engines are the most visited websites on mobile devices. Some 77 percent of smartphone users visit search engines, followed by social networks, retail sites and video-sharing websites.
    
    How does this assist e-commerce marketers? It points to the need for enhancing your website's search engine optimization when it comes to mobile phone searches. You may want to consider mobile search ads to help improve your organic search ranking.
    
    * Over half of mobile phone users search for: news, dining and navigational information.
    
    How does this assist e-commerce marketers? If your business does not fall into one of these categories, the clever marketer can still devise ways to capitalize. How so? Maybe you can create a "industry news" section. Maybe you can create a navigational guide to businesses within your category.
    
    * Roughly 90 percent of smartphone searches result in a purchase, a visit to a business, or other sorts of activities. In addition, 24 percent of smartphone users recommended a brand or product thanks to their smartphone search.
    
    How does this assist e-commerce marketers? Provide a way for the consumer to take action when they visit your website: make a purchase; drive to your store locations; provide the ability to forward pages or articles to friends and associates; etc.
    
    * The more local the consumer, the more likely the are to take action on your site:   
        - 95 percent of smartphone users seek local information.
            - 88 percent take some sort of action the day they visit a site.
            - 77 percent have actually contacted a business.
        - 61 percent call a local business.
        - 59 percent visit the local business.
    
    How does this assist e-commerce marketers? This points to the need to make sure your search engine optimization is localized; amd it is vital that consumers can easily contact your business.
    
    The world of mobile technology is advancing at the speed of light. It is difficult to keep pace, and it is crucial you allocate resources toward this arena.

• Do Online Privacy Laws Provide Enough Protection?

  • Internet privacy laws in the U.S. vary greatly depending on the segment of the online world. And, it's safe to say consumers should not assume their private information is completely secure on the Internet.
    
    Facebook, for example, has stated its members' posts are public domain. It has been reported that Twitter tweets are recorded by the Library of Congress.
    
    Although there are few U.S. laws aimed at regulating websites and their content, numerous law enforcement factions are working diligently to gain access to private Internet data. The WikiLeaks investigation and other big-time website breaches have given officials a reason to push for greater access to private data.
    
    One example of this beefed up enforcement effort is coming out of the United States Department of Transportation. The DOT has developed the Next Generation 911 Project, which will provide consumers with numerous emergency contact services, such as text messages, email and photos.
    
    The downside to the DOT proposal is that it may expose personal medical information to 911 responders. For example, the Google search engine saves the searches users make. This could be used to identify the searchers.
    
    Social networks are loaded with a ton of personal user information. And, to date, social networks do not offer any do-not-track services. Therefore, users should assume all their personal data is being tracked.
    
    You've probably noticed how frequently Internet banner ads are from companies you have either visited or shown an interest. A recent survey from Gallup and USA Today revealed 67 percent of those polled do not want advertisers to access their data in order to peddle their products to a targeted online market.
    
    We are already beginning to see lawmakers pushing for restrictions on Internet vendors accessing online consumer data. Clearly, if more data breaches occur, there will be an even greater push from government officials to implement tighter Internet security.

• Why Isn’t My SEO Campaign Working?

  • These tips reflect common errors of beginning affiliate marketers in particular.  But good news, it’s all fixable.  SEO is really quite similar to math problems in certain ways.  Yes, it’s creative, but it’s also like the word problems we hated so much as kids.  The answer is there, you just have to work through it.

    With that in mind, problem number 1 for many people is trying to bite off more than they can chew.  Successful SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.  Conquer some of the less popular keyword combos in your category before trying to take on the biggest.  As a beginner, you don’t have the resources, financial or labor, to jump on top of your main keywords.  It’s better to be king of a small island than a serf on a big one.  (I’m almost done with the bad similies.)

    Do not forget to anchor different combinations of your keywords.  For example, same day payday loans, payday loans same day, etc.  This will help improve your rankings.

    The most common error is dropping out of the game.  It’s becoming frustrated and stopping your efforts.  As we said earlier, this is a process.  If you stay with it and keep yourself educated as to what the search engines are looking for you will succeed.  Look on your SEO efforts not as a weekly chore, but as a monthly or even annual process.  Make your articles better and constantly sharpen your keywords. 

• Tips for the Beginning Online Affiliate Marketer

  • There are many reasons you may have chosen to become an affiliate marketer.  Compared to other kind of businesses you do not need much in the way of upfront costs, such as inventory, warehouse space, etc.  Computers and their languages are your passion – you can’t think of anything else you would rather do.  Or maybe, you think you’re going make a lot of money as an affiliate marketer.  That’s certainly possible, but becoming an affiliate marketer requires a lot of work, make no mistake about it.

    So, beginners, here are a few tips.

    First, do your research about the product or service you want to sell.  Make sure you have a strong interest in it, because you’ll be working in the field every day. 
    If you are driven by financial motives make sure you can earn the money you want to.  Following that, insure that the firm is reputable, pays its affiliates on time, as promised.  Is the market/product you are looking at in a good position overall?  Is there room for growth?  Once you’ve chosen the product, examine the companies competing in the field.  Who’s the leader and why?  Is there an “up and comer” doing things in a new, possibly better way?  Do your research.

    Let’s say you’re up and running – what can you do to differentiate yourself from your competition?  Certainly make sure your SEO efforts are the best they can be.  Below are a few links to articles on our site that may also be helpful to you. 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#improving-seo
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#the-key-to-successful-lead-generation---seo
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#more-leads-for-affiliate-marketers

    You can “publish” books or videos and sell them from your site.  They can be short, maybe 10 -15 pages on a given topic.  Not many of your competition will be doing this, so it’s a way to give more value to your site.  A weekly or monthly newsletter that customers can request will achieve much the same thing.

    A must for every affiliate marketer is to have a system (an autoresponder) to collect e-mail addresses.  Over time, you will build more business the better and larger your e-mail data base.  GetResponse and InfusionSoft are two types of autoresponders.  Do your research here as well to choose the best one for you.

    Google Adwords will be extremely important to you.  Write string, compelling ads that drive traffic to your site.  If you’re not seeing the results, change your wording.  Don’t forget other search engines as well.  It’s entirely possible that competition may be far less on bing, for instance, therefore your ads could stand out.

    Being a good affiliate marketer involves continuing research into your product and the very methods of computing and modern day marketing.

• Is the "PC Era" a Thing of the Past?

  • It's no secret the growth of smartphones and tablets is astronomical. Some studies have shown the global smartphone market is expected to grow by nearly 50 percent in 2011. Last year, 303.4 million smartphones were sold, and in 2011 it's expected that  450 million will be sold.
    
    Tablet sales are experiencing a similar explosion. One research firm anticipates a 224 percent growth in the tablet sales in 2011.
    
    Does this mean the personal computer era is coming to an end? Not just yet.
    
    Although it is clear that much of the technology and marketing dollars are being earmarked to the mobile and tablet arenas, studies are showing the PC market is still growing. One study shows a potential increase in PC sales of 6 percent in 2011. But, as more and more consumers are opting for tablets over traditional laptops, it is becoming obvious that the tablet market is gobbling up the laptop market. In fact, research shows tablets will eat into some 35 percent of the notebook sales totals for 2011.
    
    So -- from a marketing standpoint, how can a marketing professional who has been focusing on PC-related Internet marketing make the leap to the mobile and tablet world?
    
    Internet affiliate marketers - who are among the most tech-savvy marketing pros -- are typically on the cutting edge when it comes to forward-thinking marketing methods. Here are some ways in which these astute marketers are utilizing mobile and tablet marketing resources:
    
    * Text it! The average SMS text message is opened within four minutes (unless you are a 15-year-old, where the average is probably four seconds). Therfore, an opt-in SMS text campaign is an excellent way to quickly reach your target audience.
    
    * Think CPL. Until smartphones become more user-friendly for forms and applications, many astute marketers are focusing on mobile technology in order to capture leads, rather than sales. Once the marketer captures the customer's request for information, a follow-up email can be sent to actually generate the sales.
    
    * Think small. Mobile devices are signficantly smaller than a PC or laptop screen. Therefore, every aspect of mobile marketing must be downsized: the text, the images, the forms, etc.
    
    * Compatibility is key. The various mobile and tablet devices all have different capabilities. So, when developing your campaigns, make sure they are functional for the various services: Apple®, Android, BlackBerry®, etc.
    
    * Don't forget about the old standards. While mobile and tablet marketing is the wave of the future, make sure you continue to earmark resources toward the areas that have worked in the past. This may include: email, social media, PPC, banner ads, and more.
    
    The PC era is not completely over. As you begin to understand mobile and tablet marketing opportunities, it is equally important to carve out part of your marketing budget for the tactics that have been working for you.

• Google+ in a Battle for Survival?

  • The LA Times reported on Nov. 17, 2011 that Google+ has been facing decreasing site visits for virtually its entire history.  According to numbers provided by Hitwise, Google+ traffic has dropped in 11 of its 21 week history.  There has been an increase in visitors since the launch, but most of that came in the week following its opening to the public.  They have not help onto to that growth.  In that week, visits went from 1 million to 15 million.  More than half of those visitors did not return the next week.

    There was another spike when it announced pages for businesses and groups.  We will keep an eye out for what happens after that dust settles.

    One important note:  Hitwise does not measure traffic from mobile devices.  As you know this is becoming an increasingly important part of how people use the internet, and in particular Google.

• Ways to Improve SEO via Social Media Updates

  • There’s no more debate.  Social media helps your SEO efforts.  But how do you use social media to your best advantage?  Perseverance, multi-media postings and consistency are major factors.

    First, make social media a must in your mind (isn’t alliteration fun?)  By acknowledging its importance and by committing to being an active player, you are halfway to making social media work for you. 
    So you’ve decided to create a facebook page for your business, a brand page on twitter, a profile on LinkedIn and a google+ page as well.  And yes, you should commit to all three.  Create posts that are of interest.  Don’t create a bland post that no one will care about.  Try targeting your posts to elements of your target groups.  By doing so, you will generate greater interest over time.  After all, social really pays off when other people pick it up, forward it, re-tweet it, etc.

    Use multi-media posts.  Both photos and videos should be used because these are the kinds of posts that tend to be shared more often. 
    Nick Stamoulis, an SEO consultant and the Founder of Boston SEO company Brick Marketing, suggests staggering updates.  By reposting you increase the likelihood that your target markets will see your post.  It’s exactly like buying television or radio media.  You don’t just run one commercial during a day and assume you’re going to reach all the viewers on that station for the day.  That won’t happen.  Reposting (without being a pest) increases your reach.  More people will see your message.

    Cross promote everything.  The same television and radio media analogy applies here.  In many cases you might run a TV or radio ad on more than one station, because it increases the number of people you will reach with your message.  The same applies to social media.  Not everyone does LinkedIn or YouTube, and certainly not everyone does them all at the same time.  By sharing messages/posts across different platforms you will increase the effectiveness of your message.

    And finally check out companies that you admire and see what their efforts look like.  You can learn a lot by observing how Under Armour or Pepsi, for instance use social networks.

• The Basics of Generating More Leads

  • Here are a few tips for generating more business leads as suggested by Samir Balwani.  Email marketing continues to prove that it works.  If you make the cut and are not automatically thrown into the trash or spam folder, you have a good chance of having your email at least glanced at.   If you don’t abuse people’s trust, you can build a following for your communications via email.

    An email house such as MailChimp can handle your campaign.  They integrate with SocialPro, which is a system that allows you to identify the people on your list who have Twitter or Facebook accounts.  The process helps you convert casual readers into paying customers.

    Design targeted landing pages.  Getting someone to your website is fine, but if they are responding to an offer of some kind, is your home page enough to get them to act.  When a customer responds/clicks on an offer, they expect to be taken to the offer and be given a clear path to doing what you want them to do next.  The landing page should remind them they are there and a reason to finalize the action.  And of course, please test your pages.

• Cyber-security Laws May be on the Horizon

  • The federal government could soon enact some strict regulations governing cyber activity.
    
    The Obama Administration has been circulating a proposal aimed at clamping down on potential online data breaches. The administration's plan would mandate public disclosure of data breaches, regulate the nation's critical information infrastructure, and manadate rules for securing government computer systems. The plan would seriously affect firms involved with any online information gathering.
    
    Recently, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act (S.413), applauded the Obama administration plan. On the other hand, Larry Clinton, president/CEO of the Internet Security Alliance, is not so thrilled. Clinton does not believe the plan would be an effective means to thwart cyber-threats. Clinton countered by proposing a cybersecurity insurance market to ward off cyber-threats.
    
    The administration's cybersecurity plan would:
    
    * Give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the primary authority to secure "covered critical infrastructure" from cyber threats.
    * Direct the DHS secretary "to assist in national efforts to mitigate communications and information technology supply chain vulnerabilities to enhance the security and resiliency of federal systems and critical information infrastructure."
    * Mandate a "special provision for federal contracts" in the title establishing DHS' regulatory framework for protection of critical infrastructure.
    * Provide the DHS with resources to protect national systems.
    * Authorize the DHS to operate "consolidated intrusion detection, prevention, or other protective capabilities and ... countermeasures ..." DHS would also be authorized "to acquire, intercept, retain, use, and disclose communications and other system traffic that are transiting to or from or stored on federal systems and to deploy countermeasures ..."
    * Establish a federal reporting system for data breach incidents.
    * Provide the Federal Trade Commission with authority to implement the reporting requirements.
    
    The proposed regulations would impact businesses handling over 10,000 individuals' personal data during any 12-month period.
    
    The business segments expected to be most impacted by such a program woulde include the defense industrial base indsutry and the telecommunications industry.
    
    It is expected that Congress may act of the cybersecurity legislation in the fall of 2011.

• Zynga Addiction Growing

  • Online games are exploding in popularity -- and probably no company has produced as popular and addictive games as Zynga.
    
    Zynga is the force behind Facebook favorites Farmville and Mafia Wars. The company has recently rolled out its latest game craze -- CityVille. Believe it or not, there are some 300 million-plus users of their games. Altogether, Zynga has developed 13 different games that each boast more than 1 million players.
    
    The core to the Zynga success is developing games with a reward-share system, has been present in many other games. And they clearly saw which parts worked best and which didn't.
    
    Another component to Zynga's success is the fact that their games are free. So -- how does Zynga make money? Zynga partners with affiliate marketing programs and online advertisers to generate much of their revenue. Game players are encouraged to sign up for these programs and Zynga earns a portion of the revenue from converted affiliate sales.
    
    But probably the biggest reason for Zynga's success is the company's ability to create addictive games. It is typical to see the highly addicted Zynga game-players spending several hours on FarmVille or CityVille or several other games.

• Twitter Tests Self-Serve Advertising Platform

  • Twitter is testing its self-serve advertising platform now with a few established advertisers.  They can run their own campaigns and pay with a credit card, without having  to work with anyone on staff.  Twitter wants to move deliberately by testing the systems and making improvements as necessary.  They expect to roll it out slowly over the coming months.

    Since Twitter began “Promoted Tweets” in 2010, an advertiser had to fill out an online form, then wait for a sales rep to contact them.  A self-service platform would seem to be a boon to marketers and Twitter itself.  It’s hard to imagine that this change will not increase Twitter’s ad sales exponentially.

• Will Google Plus be Serious Competition for Facebook?

  • Ever since Facebook exploded on the social networking scene a few years ago there have been few competitors challenging Mark Zuckerberg's "baby" for the premier spot in the social media world.
    
    Now the Internet community is eager to see whether Google Plus will make a considerable dent in Facebook's marketshare.
    
    Google has been slowly rolling out Google Plus to a limited test group since June 28. How will Google Plus differ from Facebook, and how will Google try to improve on the Facebook experience to lure in more users?
    
    * Google Plus offers "Circles" - clusters of friends.
    
    * Google Plus offers users applications such as Google Docs, a calendar that can be used with friend circles, a video chat room called‘Hangouts,’ the ability to watch Youtube videos with others in your circles, a group messaging feature called‘Huddle’ that can be used on Android OS and iPhones.
    
    * Users may upload videos and pictures with one-touch button.
    
    * Google Plus notifications and other settings can be customized by each user.
    
    * What appears to be missing from Google Plus -- at least in the beginning -- are the popular game apps such as Farmville.
    
    * Reports are indicating Goolge Plus apps may require a high speed connection.
    
    * It's hard to believe, but the world's biggest search engine did not include a search feature in the first incarnation of Google Plus.
    
    Although it is in limited distribution, Google Plus already has some 20 million users in the few weeks since its launch.

    It will be very interesting to see if Facebook can hold on to its number-one social networking position as Google Plus grows its user base.

• New Domain Names Up For Grabs

  • The Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit governing body in charge of Internet domains, are slated to meet in Singapore in June, 2011, to brainstorm over expansion of domain suffixes.
    
    ICANN will determine if websites may be created with unique suffixes. If this transpires, a flood of registgered domain could be expected.
    
    One benefit for major companies is that such a move could help to enhance their brand and strengthen their online presence.
    
    Smaller businesses would be able to develop more targeted online marketing efforts.
    
    If the ICANN plan is implemented, businesses could register a geo-targered domain name. For example, "dot-nyc" would represent domains targeting New York City consumers.
    In addition, the domain suffixes could be better designed for specific industries, such as "dot-music" for websites representing the music industry.
    
    Michele Jourdan, ICANN communications manager, predicted the change could lead to 300 to 1,000 new domain extensions.
    
    In addition, companies may be able to purchase their own domain. This could dramatically help major companies to strengthen their brand.
    
    Such custom suffixes may cost about $185,000. Custom extensions for smaller businesses would be priced considerably lower.

• Affiliate Marketers - Marketing Tips

  • Some of these you already have in place, some you working on and maybe a few you have been putting off.  Please allow us to be a friendly nudge.  Jennifer Schiff offered the following tips for the Small Business Computing website.

    First and foremost have an SEO strategy for the coming year.  It is the number one way to drive traffic to your website.

    Posting videos to YouTube and creating your own channel can have a huge positive impact on your SEO.  Links from your YouTube videos also drive traffic directly to your website.

    Have a mobile website.  You know this already.

    Use social/business sites.  Have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google Places and LinkedIn.  Check out Google+, as well as geo-social sites such as Foursquare.

    Have a Wiki for Online collaboration.  Document management is extremely important especially if your workforce is spread over a large geographic area.  Robert Pease of Iconic Adventures recommends “PBWorks.”  You can begin with free services to see what it can do for you and move up from there.

    A business blog attached to your website will help with SEO.

    Apps are the thing and will be in 2012.  Apple is now seeing 1 billion (yes with a “b”) apps a month downloaded.  For small business they can be very expensive, although certainly worth it for many companies, but if you need to control expenses, go to AppsBar.  You can download order forms and other GPs functions.

    The rules of business and especially marketing seem to change daily.  One of the best things you can do for yourself in the coming year is to stay informed.

• Google Analytics To Add Webmaster Search Query Data

  • Google has announced it will add Google Webmaster Tools data to its Google Analytics.
    
    The new feature is currently in a pilot stage, and will be available to everyone later this month.
    Google will add a new section in "Traffic Sources" called "Search Engine Optimization." There will be sub-sections for Summary, Queries and Landing Pages.
    
    “Webmasters have long been asking for better integration between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics,” Google reported on one it its blogs.
    
    The SEO reports also take advantage of Google Analytics’ filtering and visualization capabilities for deeper analysis.
    
    How will this benefit webmasters? You may filter for queries that had, for instance, more than 100 clicks. A chart will appear illustrating the extent to which each query helped your overall clicks from top queries.
    This will enable webmasters to better determine the more effective PPC campaigns.

• Common Mistakes in Online Lead Generation

  • So you’ve got this great site, but you don’t see the traffic you wanted.  Ian Rhodes for Visibility Magazine offered some thoughts regarding online lead generation and some common mistakes.

    Don’t write with your needs in mind; remember the reader.

    Don’t forget the entry level user.  Make sure your site is not too technical, thereby scaring away potential clients.  Use keyword research for your industry.

    Don’t insult them with “Click Here” or “Click Me” flashers.  Ask your visitor for their information in a clear, non-insulting fashion.

    Make sure your landing pages give them what they want.

    Use your Site analytics.  They’re free from Google, use them.  Find out the page that is driving traffic away.  Or the page that is not giving the visitor what they want.  Analytics also tells you how the visitors found you and what they did while on the site.  He recommends taking 5 minutes a day to review your analytics.  It will save you from additional head-scratching later.

    Work your social marketing accounts.  A few updates on LinkedIN or Facebook are not enough.  If you’re not sure what to do, check out what others are doing, especially your competition.  Check out what some of the more possibly unrelated, but respected companies are doing as well.  You will learn from seeing what others are doing.

    Don’t post boring content.  You will drive leads away.

• U.S. Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement

  • The court settlement between Google and numerous authors and publishers has been rejected by a U.S. federal judge
    
    After a two-year battle, Justice Denny Chin has delayed Google's plan to implement a massive online library. It's one of the most prominent copyright-related court cases.   
    
    In 2004, Google began a massive book scanning project for online publication searches. The objective was to allow people to view exceprts of books from Google's library. That sent the publishing community into a tizzy. In 2005 the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers hit Google with a class action suit for copyright infringement.
    
    Google's defense? The giant search engine said section §107 of the US Copyright Act allows copying without permission from the rightful owner for limited and 'transformative' purposes (i.e., for commentary, criticism or parody).
    
    In 2009, the parties came up with a settlement agreement that would authorize Google to continue to scan publications, sell subscriptions and online access to books. The agreement would also allow Google to sell advertising on book pages. Google would pay copyright holders 63 percent of revenue generated; and more than $45 million to those whose works had already been scanned.
    
    In addition, Google would need prior approval to display books in print. There would be an opt-out clause for those whose books are out of print in order to remove the publication from the digital library.
    
    So, why did Judge Chin object to the agreement? The judge agreed there was cultural, intellectual and educational benefits from the Google library. However, he ruled:
    
    … the ASA would simply go too far. It would permit this class action ... to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.
    
    Judge Chin was more concerned with the opt-out clause, especially where the author cannot be identified ("orphan books").
    The judge said the issue over orphan books would be more appropriately addressed by Congress.
    
    Google has several options at this point, including attempting to revise the settlement.
    
    The case points to the need for lawmakers to address Internet-related copyright matters.

• Lead generation through affiliate programs – Boost your online returns

  • The persistently weak global economy has lots of people looking to supplement their incomes.  This has led to major growth in pay per lead affiliate programs.  The reason is that you don’t have to warehouse product or pay additional rent on a business location.  An affiliate marketer promotes the product or services of a merchant company and generates leads for them.  You earn commissions for each person that you generate for the merchant.  Here are a few tips for improving your lead generation results:

    Social media marketing is a must.  Not only because so many people can be found there, but because personal information is collected by all of them (Facebook, Linked in, Twitter) you can target your marketing in a way that is almost impossible to do outside of social media.

    Collecting customer information for your own use is extremely important.  Customer e-mails are extremely important as you can send e-mails to them with links to your affiliate merchants.  Any extra information you collect will help you to build a profile of your customers and thereby target them with the affiliate programs that fit their needs.  This will generate a higher number of leads.

    Send traffic directly to the landing page of the pay per lead affiliate program.  You will increase your conversion rate and reduce the chance of losing a customer.

    Don’t be afraid to advertise on different websites and blogs.  Test what sites work and what ones don’t.  The web is constantly changing.  Testing your ads is a never-ending process.  But the more testing you do, the more affiliate marketer you will be.

• Facebook “Ticker” to Carry Ads

  • In a company e-mail released on Friday, November 18, 2011, Facebook announced that beginning on Monday, November 21, “sponsored stories” would scroll in the “ticker” column.  The ticker is the newsfeed in the upper right-hand part of facebook.com.  So far, the only “ads” were for facebook games. 

    The e-mail said that “sponsored stories help people see more relevant marketing on Facebook and they can be twice as engaging as ads on Facebook."
    
    The company has been marketing the stories to agencies, brands and political entities.

• LinkedIn IPO Could Rake in the Dough

  • Business social network LinkedIn is preparing for an IPO that could pull in an estimated $274 million. LinkedIn unveiled its IPO pricing on May 9. The company will offer 7.84 million shares at $32 to $35 per share.
    
    Initially LinkedIn estimated its IPO would generate $175 million, but the company now says there is increased interest from the investment community. The company will trade under the symbol LNKD. LinkedIn hopes to debut in May, 2011 on the New York Stock Exchange.
    
    LinkedIn generated $243.1 million in revenue in 2010, which was a whopping 102 percent gain over 2009. That growth trend is continuing in 2011. In the first quarter of the year, LinkedIn raked in $93.9 million, a 110 percent increase over the same period in 2010.
    
    Most of LinkedIn's revenue comes from its hiring and marketing solutions and premium subscriptions. As of March 31, 2011, LinkedIn reported 102 million registered users.

• Google's New Algorithm Weeding Out Content Farm Traffic

  • It appears Google’s recent revamping of its search engine formula is accomplishing its objective: to penalize content farm websites.
    
    The Google enhancement that was launched earlier in 2011, dubbed "Panda," was designed to block website publishers that cram unrelated content into their site in order to enhance their Google rankings for various search terms.
    
    The Internet research firm Experian Hitwise has examined downstream traffic from Google (the next site visited after Google.com). Earlier this year, 0.57 percent of Internet visitors jumped from Google to a site operated by Demand Media, one of the alleged content farm sites. As of mid-April, around 0.34 percent of Google’s downstream visited Demand -- a significant 40 percent drop.
    
    Answerbag, a Q&A website, is faring far worse than Demand. Answerbag's traffic has plummuted 80 percent; and eHow's traffic has fallen by 29 percent since Panda took effect.
    
    Other sites feeling the pain of Google's algorithm change include Examiner.com (down 51 percent), Associate Content (down 61 percent) and Mahalo (down 78 percent).

• Tips for Affiliate Sales Marketers Success

  • Affiliate sales can be very lucrative but success doesn’t happen by itself, without effort from you.  Her are a few recommendations.

    Make sure that the subject matter of your website is of interest to you.  If it bores you, you will not give it the attention it deserves.  To be successful you must constantly update and provide new content for your site.  You won’t do that if you have little interest in the subject matter.

    Use Google Panda to help you produce better product for your site.  It’s no longer about how many times you can fit keywords into an article that gives you high ranking.  Your site should have original, quality content that leads to a positive customer experience.  After that, have real links that take you to a related site.  Do you post a spider web of links.  It will hurt your ranking.  If you’re not a writer, hire one with experience with SEO.

    Meet other network affiliates.  Guest columns (you post on his/hers and vice versa) are a good way for both of you to generate fresh, recently updated content.

    Keep yourself educated regarding the theme of your website and the art and skill of writing for the web.

• UK Web Usage Numbers

  • From Search Engine Journal:
    1.    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that 38 million UK adults used the web last year.  More than 30million use it every day.
    2.    ONS also reported that 31 million purchased goods or services online.  The study also showed that the higher the income, the more likely they are to buy online.  98% of people who make more than £41,600 use the net.  Only 69% of adults with household incomes under £10,399 use it.
    3.    According to the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM), an average UK adult spends 22 hours, 15 minutes on the internet each month.  That’s an increase of 65% over three years ago.
    4.    According to a study by Forrester, 93% of all internet traffic comes from a search engine.   And according to Statcounter.com, Google receives 92% of all search engine traffic.
    5.    The future is here.  According to ONS, 71% of 16 to 24 year olds are accessing the internet using their handsets.  There have been many articles predicting the passing of PC’s.  This statistic supports that theory.

• Google Tinkers With Search Page

  • In an effort to keep pace with some new search engine competitors and their unique features, Google has been playing with some design changes of its own.
    
    The new page Google is testing includes more white space in an attempt to simplify the navigating process. There are also dotted lines that separate the search results.
    
    One blog, TechCrunch, criticized the potential changes, commenting that the overall page looks too sparse and bland.
    
    There's no indication that Google is losing much ground to its competitors. The search engine giant accounts for about two-thirds of all searches, according to ComScore.

• Moving Your Customer From App Downloaders to Subscribers

  • Mobile is changing everything that seems as if it just changed (the PC revolution.)  The mobile revolution is not going to stop; that is until something else comes along.  But in the meantime, you develop and post an app for customers to download.  Great.  Now, how do you move them from that to becoming registered users of your service?  Prassad Thammineni offers these hints in an article for Mashable. 

    
    Establish trust by making sure your app is professional.  No typos or bad layout to start with.  And, have a service agreement or privacy policy to show that you know enough to have one. 

    
    Next, make it flow easily and fast.  Like almost anything, remove all the barriers that get in the way of getting the customer to do what you want them to do.  For example, remove the “confirm password” field, and give them fewer options to sign up.  The more decisions they have to make , the better chance you have to lose them.

    Test your sign-up flow with an analytics system.

    Keeping them coming back is a bit trickier and is in great measure determined by what you’re selling, but well placed tutorials may help, as well as progress bars.  Keep testing and make it easy to go from app to user.

• The Key to Successful Lead Generation? SEO!

  • According to Webmarketing123’s report:  “2011 State of Digital Marketing Report” SEO plays the most important role in lead generation success. 
    The report surveyed over 500 marketing professionals on the topics of SEO, PPC and social media, and found that 57.4 % of respondents said that SEO has the largest impact on lead generation; 24.8% said PPC, and 17.4% said social media.    Those results are for business to business.

    For business to consumer the numbers lean more to social media.  41% still say SEO has the largest impact, but 34.2% say PPC and 24.8% say social media.

    How do marketers measure the success of their digital marketing programs?  For business to business 73.9% said website traffic, 69.2% said lead generation, 64.7% mentioned click through rate and 62.5% said sales.

    Some other numbers of interest:  
    46.4% of business to business marketers said the most important objective is to generate leads, followed by 22.2% who said sales is the goal and 15.3% said building brand awareness is mkost important.

    Make sure you’re keeping pace:  According to the report, 53.1% plan on increasing their 2012 SEO budgets, while 60 percent plan on increasing social media budgets.

• Tips for Better Performing PPC Ads

  • Heledd Jones offers the following tips for testing and improving your Google Adwords results. 
    1.     Include the search query in the ad. That’s what the customer is looking for.  Make it easy for them. 
    2.    Compare to what your competitors are doing.  Is their offer better than yours?  If so, move on.  not, test yours. 
    3.    Test different calls to action. 
    4.    Only test one ad at a time.  Results can overlap if you’re testing too many things at one time.
    5.    Take advantage of Google’s ad formats and free tools, such as “auto-optimize.”
    6.    Make sure your landing page displays the search query prominently.  Remember the customer going through the process.  Don’t forget what they are looking for.

    Her final tip is “test, don’t guess.” 

• Raise Your Writing Profile with Social Media

  • Matt Petronzio gathered some thoughts on how to use Social Media to increase your visibility as a writer.  With each Google Panda update, improving content and your professional profile overall, (shares, viral articles, etc.) become more and more important. 
    http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/social-media-writers/

    I love Susan Orlean’s breakdown of the big social media networks:   “Twitter is a noisy cocktail party, with lots of chatting and quick interactions, a kind of casual free-for-all,” she says. “Facebook is a combination high school and college reunion and therapy group. Google+ I haven’t figured out yet.”  She goes onto recommend Twitter for writers because of its big RSS feed.

    A number of writers illustrate the importance of embracing your communications with enthusiasm.  Don’t be afraid to share some personal notes (please no politics, religion or dating) about yourself.  Their thought is if you cultivate “enthusiastic” followers, they are more apt to seek you out and to share your posts.

    It is suggested that you make connections with other writers and I couldn’t agree more.  In your field or out of it, in your discipline or out of it, multiple writer networks are a valuable source of knowledge, know-how and here it is again, enthusiasm.  They’re more likely to share your writing as well, because they understand the importance.

    Orlean also sees social media as practice forums for young writers:  “Social media is an extension of your voice,” says Orlean. “For aspiring writers, it’s a chance to practice miniaturization — how to say something interesting in a very concise way — which is, in itself, a good writing exercise.”

    There were a couple of other suggestions including not to obsess with your number of followers, but instead focus on quality.  Do not force your content either.  In other words, if you’re not sure about a post, chances are you should keep it in your pocket.

    We hope this helps you to better define how social media can play a part in making you a writer people will want to follow.

• Domino's Slices Up Competition in UK Digital Media Awards

  • This is no cheesy award.
    
    Domino’s Pizza has delivered several prestigious UK media industry honors. The pizza delivery company's UK site, http://www.dominos.co.uk/, was recognized for its innovative online activity in the Revolution Awards. The honor notes that Domino's has consistently pushed the envelope with its Internet ingenuity.
    
    The pizza giant's Facebook Superfans campaign was awarded "Best Use of Affiliate Marketing." Domino's Superfans page amassed some 32,000 followers in just four months.
    
    Domino's also was lauded for its social affiliate ‘widget,’ which enables web publishers to download the widget and earn revenue for any pizza orders received through the widget. Over 6,500 web publishers have downloaded the widget to date.
    
    The pizza chain's social networking initiatives were developed with the help of Domino’s digital agency, Arena Quantum.
    
    Domino’s Pizza has 672 stores in the UK and Ireland.

• GOOGLE VS. BING & YAHOO

  • The battle rages on.  Recently Bing and Yahoo have been making modest, yet steady inroads into Google’s gargantuan share of the search engine business.  In September, Experian Hitwise reports that Google actually had a minor gain of its own. 

    
    Compared to August 2011’s numbers, Google posted a 2%increase.   66.12% compared to 65.09%.  Yahoo had 15.27% in September, and Bing 12.8%, down from August’s numbers of 15.89% and 13.1% respectively.  It was a 4% drop for Yahoo and 2% for Bing. 

    
    Other results announced included the percentage of clicks by number of keywords.   One word searches comprised 26.45% of all searches, 23.66% for two word searches and 19.34% for three word searches.  Put another way, one, two and three word searches make up 69.45% of all searches.  Keeping it simple continues to be the way to go.  No big changes in these numbers, but it serves as a reminder to all of us make our keyword selection very carefully.  And, keep it simple.

• How To Improve Your Mobile SEO

  • How to Improve Your Mobile SEO
    1.    Make sure your site is mobile friendly.  In addition to being better for your users, it will give you better Google search results. 
    2.    Mobile keywords are different from PC/Mac keywords.  Go to Google’s Keyword tool , click on advanced options and set it to show “all mobile devices.” 
    3.    Avoid flash and large images.  These may not be viewable by many mobile devices.  Write in HTML5 and shorten your ALT tags to ensure they post easily.
    4.    Don’t create a duplicate page when designing your mobile material.  Use a rel=canonical tag in your HTML to designate your “official” page. 
    5.    Refer to the Google guide telling how to build a mobile sitemap with your site.  It’s very important to use correct formatting, because if not, your links may disappear from the search engine, when you’re trying to be found.

    It is estimated that 16% of all google searches originate from mobile devices and that number is growing far faster than from PC’s.  Therefore it is increasingly important to keep your site mobile-ready in order to capture your share of the entire available market, including mobile.

• 43% of Consumers have a Retailer’s App on Their Mobile

  • The good news for retailers is that 43% of consumers surveyed have installed a retailer’s app on their mobile phone.  The bad news is only 14% have used it.  This is because this same study showed that people check out the products in retail locations but buy cheaper at other locations online.

    The Retrevo study suggested that retailers give thorough information, including effective photos and product descriptions.

    There is still some question as to how much this will ultimately help, but a well-designed and thought out website never hurts.

• FCC to Launch Online Tool to Protect Small Business from Cyber Attacks

  • 40% of all cyber attacks are directed at companies with less than 500 employees.  To help combat the problem the FCC is creating an online tool to help these companies.  
    The Small Biz Cyber Planner will allow businesses to create customized cyber security plans by answering simple questions about their business and its online presence.  The Planner will be available in November.

     
    The effort is the result of a collaboration of the FCC, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Symantec, Visa Inc., Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP), Bank of America and others.  
    Roland Cloutier, chief security officer at ADP, helped put the threat to small business in perspective.  “Is it easier to steal a million dollars from a global company that has massive security measures in place, or $200,000 from five small businesses?”

• How Does Google’s “Click to Call” Work?

  • Google is currently testing “Click to Call”, wherein, you speak directly over the phone for free to businesses you find on Google search pages.  This will not be available for all businesses, but when it is, you will a green phone icon in their advertisement or a call link in their contact information.

    Google assures callers that the business cannot see your number and that Google will not use or sell the numbers.  On the other hand, the business’ phone number will appear on your phone so you can save it for future use.

    There are additional measures being taken to protect persons from fraud as well.

• Is Your Paid Search Campaign Working?

  • Elisa Gabbert of Wordstream offers the following five “metrics” to help you determine if your campaign is working.  
    1.    Google’s Quality Score.  This measures the relevance of your keywords (kw).  The factors that make up your score include the click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and its corresponding ad; the relevance of the kw and ad to the search query; the relevance of the kw to its ad group; the CTR of the display URL’s in the ad group; and the quality of your landing page.
    2.    Although there are disagreements on the tools that measure internet effectiveness, the majority of experts agree that if you only have one tool with which to measure, look at click through rate.  Primarily, it tells you if your ad is relevant.  If your CTR is low, your keywords or ad need help.
    3.    Conversion Rate:  Are your customers following through on what you want them to?  How many are completing the task desired in the ad?  This will tell you.
    4.    Cost per Conversion:  Compared to what that customer is worth, what are they costing you?
    5.    Wasted Spend:  By careful use of negative keywords, you can eliminate traffic that is not relevant to your business.  By using a negative keyword you prevent your ad from displaying in these undesired searches.

• Surprise, Surprise. Men Shop More Socially Than Women

  • A study conducted by Performics found that 57% of men, compared to 40% of women, use deal sites, to research and compare products.  For research purposes, 63% of men and 52% of women use shopping sites; and 54% of men and 43% of women use social networks for research.

    Other numbers to consider:  62% of men compare products on shopping sites, while 50% of women do so.  Men are more likely to compare prices at retail locations as well.  62% said they use their mobile at least in part to check prices while in a retail location.  Only 45% of women said they did so.

    Performics surveyed 1,000 active social network users who admitted to using social networks “at least occasionally in the purchase process.”

    Overall the study found that shopping sites are more important in the purchase process than either social or deals sites.  72% said shopping sites were important, 58% deals sites, and 41% responded that social sites were most important.

• Google Panda and Tips on Making Your Site Better

  • Google launched Panda In Feb 2011 and has added updates through the year, so we thought this would be a good time to review ideas to make your site better and more “Panda friendly”.  We thought it best to go directly to the source so these questions are direct from Google.

    In reviewing your site(s), Google recommends asking yourself the following questions, (and this is by no means a complete list.)
    •       Would you trust the information presented in this article?
    •       Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
    •       Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
    •        Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
    •        Does the article describe both sides of a story?
    •        Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
    •        Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
    •        Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
    •        Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
    •        Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
    •       Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

    Our websites need constant care.  Hopefully this helps you in a review of yours.

• The 3-5-7 Rules of E-Mail Marketing

  • Tis’ the season for family, celebrations and making money so we can enjoy life the rest of the year.  That means marketing has to take place to drive business to your website or business.  Dori Thompson, an e-commerce expert offers the following rules for e-mail advertising campaigns. 
    •    You have 3 seconds to grab their attention.  You’re competing with subject lines from Mom, spouses and others, so it has to be good.
    •    You have 5 seconds, once you have their attention to draw them in.  Do you have a clear plan of action for the customer to follow
    •    You have 7 seconds to “compel” the customer to action.   The offer has to be one of timeliness, interest and easy to understand.

    Thompson recommends paying extra attention when checking your own e-mail.  What grabs your attention?  What doesn’t?  What will make your target consumer want to open your e-mail?

    A t3leads hint…if it’s not working, don’t be afraid to change it.  Keep trying different approaches until you get the response you’re looking for.

• Trends in Mobile Advertising

  • As people continue to use their phones for information gathering; everything from restaurant searches to phone applications, mobile advertising will grow, expand and evolve.  Some current trends worth watching:
    1.     As research continues and behavioral predictions become more accurate, look for ads that are more accurate regarding behavior, location and time.  They might actually predict a product or service’s  need almost before the customer recognizes the need.
    2.    Search engine advertising will only increase and get better at targeting products, need and location.
    3.    As mobile advertising is new, standards of measurement are too.  Look for vast improvements in the very new future as firms come to a general consensus as to how to measure effectiveness. 
    4.    Look for more interactive ads.  Currently most are banners or text. 
    5.    As more data is collected about us, it is likely that this information will follow us everywhere like a cloud.  It will know our buying habits, preferences, location and more.

• Google Search Gets Another Tweak

  • The latest upgrades to the Google search algorithm give higher rankings to more recent information.  The focus of this tweak is to give higher preference to the most current information on recurring events.

    They give the example of the Olympics.  “If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics,” Singhal writes.  A “freshness algorithm” will ensure that summer 2012 Olympics results float to the top.  As for recent events, a search for “Occupy Oakland Protest” would yield the latest news.  “You’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old,” he writes. Frequent updates refer to things that aren’t a hot topic or a recurring event, but nevertheless change often. For instance, a search for “slr cameras” should produce only the most-recent models.
    According to Google’s blog, they expect roughly 35% of searches to be impacted.

    The lesson to be learned here is the importance of posting new content on a regular basis.

• Online Sales Taxes

  • This story may surprise you, but a loose coalition of traditional retail outlets sent a letter to the Senate Finance Committee recommending they hold a hearing on a bill that would allow states to tax online purchases.  The surprise part is who signed the letter.  Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon all signed the letter.

    The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the topic last year.  Under current law people who buy goods online are supposed to declare the purchases on their tax form.  I must admit, I did not know that, did you?

    The letter said that an online sales tax would “level the playing field between traditional brick-and-mortar and e-commerce retail businesses."

    The letter claimed that the bill would allow the states to collect an additional $23 billion in taxes.

    Amazon signed the letter because they want a single national framework to follow rather than a patchwork collection of state laws.

    e-bay did not sign the letter and is opposed to any legislation that requires sales taxes on purchases.

• Google, Chrome and Multiple Devices

  • https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/technology.html#chrome-ready-android  This links you to a related article on the T3Leads site that relates the Chrome/Android story from the technology standpoint.

    
    Google and privacy are in the news.  Big news in fact; federal lawsuit kind of big news.  They want to collect and possibly share user information across all of their services from search to YouTube to Google+.  With the release of Google Chrome for Android, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

    Google posted on their mobile blog that the new browser asks users to sign in with their Google account.  This synchronizes data across desktop and mobile.  Google says this allows users to, “take their personalized Web browsing experience with them wherever they go.”

    One of the key issues with Google’s plans is how much information, and exactly what kind of information, they will be collecting.  Apparently plenty.

    If you install Google Chrome on your Android you give them the ability to “read sensitive log data,” including personal information.  It also collects data on the URL’s you have visited, as well as your bookmarks.  They will then mix this up with your GPS location software and NFC (near field communication) data.

    You can see why marketers would be hungry to get this information and that they’d be happy to fork up lots of dough to have access.  And as a result, this explains why Google is in such a hurry to make it a reality.

• Google Privacy Policies Have a Court Date

  • The U.S. District Court of Washington D.C. moved forward a lawsuit against Google’s announced privacy policy revisions.

    The court agreed to a request by the plaintiff, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), to move the court hearing date.  The lawsuit is actually filed against the FTC (Federal Trade Commission.)  EPIC argues that the new policies will violate an agreement between the FTC and Google.

    The court has ordered the FTC to respond to EPIC’s complaint by February 17.  EPIC will then have until February 21st, to reply.  Google’s new privacy policies are set to go into effect on March 1st.  Google has held firm on that date, even after they were asked by at least one European country to delay the policy revisions.  They refused to move the date of enactment.

    This case places additional pressure on Google to delay the implementation.  If you’re curious why Google seems to be in such a hurry, it is because the information that Google wants to track will be used to build more complete user profiles and thus sell these connections to advertisers.  Delays will ultimately cost them billions; depending of course, on how long the delay is.

    EPIC says the changes are not optional for the user; Google of course says they are.  They also say they have taken additional steps to inform users of the upcoming changes.

    Google met with some House Members last week and the ranking member of that meeting Rep. Mary Bono Mack (CA), has sent Google a letter to which she has requested a response by February 21st.  She is most concerned by how Google will share personal information that it collects.

    No matter how this case is decided, it’s a safe bet that the issue of privacy and the internet is just heating up; rather than the other way around.

• 5 Time Sharing Apps for Google Chrome

  • What none of us have extra of, is time.  Hopefully these apps will do just that - create some extra time in your day.

    1.     Bufferapp.com:  Buffer helps you share content on a time-released basis.  For example, the buffer icon easily adds an article to your buffer and releases it at times you have pre-determined.  There is a mobile version, so it works there too.  Buffer is perfect for twitter so you can spread out the time in which your re-tweets appear; and of course you have analytics for every post you send.  You decide the times you want the information shared.  Your followers will be thankful.

    2.    Explain and Send Screenshots: Nothing like having a title that tells you what it does, right?  This app allows you to capture screenshots, make notes and then share it with a direct link to the frame.  Great tool for sharing ideas with others as well as for brainstorming.  This tool would guarantee that literally, everyone is on the same page.

    3.    Stay Focused:  Perfect tool for the “overly social” writer.  This allows you to block specific pages for the times that you choose.  You can for example, block facebook for all but 15 minutes a day.  This keeps you from wasting time, yes, but it also acts as a scheduling device if you are one who is always putting off doing your due diligence with social media.

    4 and 5.  SEOmoz Tool Bar: This allows you to check for SEO metrics easily without having to dig them up manually.  At a glance, see how many inbound links there are.  The tool works for Google search result pages as well.  Lots of other nifty features, so check it out.  For metrics that SEOmoz misses go to SEO for Chrome.  Great stuff.

• More Tips for Generating Website Content

  • Todd Wasserman in an article for Mashable gathered some web content creation suggestions from some pros in the industry.  Here are the highlights.
    http://mashable.com/2012/01/30/digital-marketing-creativity-tips/#443431-Take-a-Break-From-the-Web

    1.     Take a break from the web.  This could also be described as “permit yourself to take a break from things.”  Most of know intellectually that it’s a good idea to re-start now and then.  Your T3Leads team is hereby giving you permission to do so.  Return to the computer with a fresh mind, it will do wonders for your output.
    2.    Meet new people.  The purpose of this is to stop what I unflatteringly call “the inbreeding of ideas.”  It is imperative that fresh ideas and new approaches are explored no matter what your job.  If the same 5 people from the same general place keep working on the same exact things, content is not going to vary much.  If you are a self-employed affiliate who is diligently cranking out business and working on making your website better every day, it’s hard to get away.  Here again we give you permission to go somewhere you’ve never been, even a coffee shop across town, and meet someone new.  New approaches.  They’re imperative.
    3.    Avoid Brainstorming in large groups.  I love this idea.  As the former owner of an ad agency, I loathed the infamous large group (more than 4) brainstorming session.  An absolute waste of time.  The 2 “p”s, politics and politeness take over, and they’re a horrible combination for quality brainstorming.  The recommendation is to brainstorm in groups of two. 
    4.    “Use the Jerry Seinfeld Trick.”  As the article describes, this is essentially persistence.  Successfully creative people are flat out more persistent than those who did not succeed.  Seinfeld’s rule is “don’t break the chain.”  Place an “X” on your calendar for every day you reach your creative goal…and don’t break the chain.  In other words, be persistent about writing and creating.  Schedule a time of day if you must and stick to it.
    5.    They call the next tip the Hemingway rule, I’ve heard it from John Waters, but I really know it from myself as a writer (I didn’t know I was such a genius)…Do not leave yourself a blank sheet of paper.  In other words, know what you’re going to write, or at the least have a subject and a place to start, waiting for you at the start of each session.  As your last chore of one day’s writing, leave yourself a place to start the next day.

    A superior batch of suggestions if you ask me.  Creating great content also means developing good habits as a writer.  By writing more you will become a better writer.  By being persistent, you will become a better affiliate marketer.

• Google Privacy Changes

  • Clearly this is link-heavy story.  We apologize in advance.  But we want to be clear on sources and to connect you with the stories we have written on the topic previously.  The links below are to other T3Leads articles that have previously been posted about Google’s recent changes. 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#google-adds-google--to-search 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#ftc-to-investigate-google 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#search-and-adwords-aren---t-the-only-changes-in-google---s--and-our--future
    To the surprise of no one, Google’s new privacy policy is creating a stir.  Essentially it says that information about users based on their movements and activity on all Google’s products will be shared.  This includes Google+, YouTube, Android phone usage and search.  The change says that the user has to control privacy on each site individually.  There is not one single opt-out switch. 
    Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager, stresses that the user is still in control. “If you are logged in, you can still edit or turn off your Search history, switch Gmail chat to ‘off the record,’ control the way Google tailors ads to your interests, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer.”
        “We’re not collecting more data about you. Our new policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve your experience on Google — whichever products or services you use. This is something we have already been doing for a long time.”
       “ You can use as much or as little of Google as you want. For example, you can have a Google Account and choose to use Gmail, but not use Google+. Or you could keep your data separate with different accounts -- for example, one for YouTube and another for Gmail.”
    Google says the changes are meant to enhance the user experience including the ability to better target ads to the user. 
    As a result of the announcement 8 members of Congress (both Republicans and Democrats) sent a letter to Google requesting clarification on the changes. 
    "While Google suggests that the purpose of this shift in policy is to make the consumer experience simpler, we want to make sure it does not make protecting consumer privacy more complicated," reads the letter. The lawmakers also noted that because of Google's global reach, the change "potentially touches billions of people worldwide."
    Here’s the response to the Congressional members from Google.  https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BwxyRPFduTN2NTZhNDlkZDgtMmM3MC00Yjc0LTg4YTMtYTM3NDkxZTE2OWRi&hl=en_US
    You should of course read all the information you can and make up your own mind.  But we want to share a very interesting observation reported in the CNN article made by Brent Rose of Gizmodo:  "The fact that you can't opt-out of shared search data, and that Google will know more about you than your wife? That's a little creepy."
    Below are the links that comprised the source material of this article.
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/27/tech/web/google-privacy-clarified/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72197.html

• Search and AdWords Aren’t the Only Changes in Google’s (And Our) Future

  • http://www.google.com/policies/

    Google has announced massive changes to its privacy policies, (saying they are combining 60 different ones into 1.)  So far so good, what does the policy say?  The exact wording can be found in the link above.

    In short, it will give them the power to use your information, such as what you watch on YouTube to your gmail account to tailor ads to your personal tastes.  In their own words:
    “Our new policy reflects our desire to create a simple product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease.”

    They reiterate that they will never sell personal information, which is as much as we know, true.  The changes are a little creepy, but are also not much different I’m guessing from what facebook does, and this writer for one is often thankful for the ads that appear on facebook.  I have a real interest in many of them.

    This is certainly not a bad way to go for marketers, of course.  Exactly how marketers will be able to use the information and what it will cost is for another page, but as an ex-ad agency owner, the ability to target to this extent is very exciting.

• 2011 Social Media Use: The ComScore Report

  • As reported in the column below by Eric Eldon, ComScore has released its year-end report regarding social media. 
    http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/21/comscoresocial2011/
    The report makes clear just how prevalent social media is, not just in the U.S., but across the globe.  Social media sites, including facebook and twitter now reach 82% of the world’s internet-using population.  1.2 billion people.  20% of all time spent online is spent on a social media site.

    ComScore currently conducts web measurement in 43 countries.  Of those, 41 show social media penetration rates of over 85%.

    Microblogging outside of twitter is growing.  LinkedIn now has almost 100 million subscribers; tumblr is up to 40 million.

    Both facebook and twitter have the vast majority of their users outside the U.S.  In fact, over 80% of their users are now outside the U.S.

    Women lead men in social media usage.  In North America and Europe they spend 2 hours a month more on the internet than men.  This gap becomes larger in older people, and the gap narrows with younger age groups.

    E-mail usage is down with younger markets and shows no sign of making a comeback.

    Mobile continues to show growth although not what you might expect.  The report shows that between 25% and 33% of users in Western markets reported accessing social media via a mobile device at least once a month.  This number, although less that we would have expected, will do nothing but increase.

    ComScore’s methodology, considered by many to be the best in the measurement business, includes large-scale opt-in user sampling around the world and across desktop and mobile devices.

    The report wasn’t all about fb and twitter though.  Two relatively new kids on the block, tumblr and Pinterest are gaining followers.  Tumblr gained 18% for the year; from 15.9 million unique users to 18.8.  Pinterest jumped 55% to 7.51 million from 4.85.

    comScore makes the distinction between fb and twitter vs. Pinterest and tumblr.  Beyond sharing photos and a “what you’re doing now” format, the two newbies allow people to go a step further and share interests and hobbies in a new and easy to use format.  They’re new formats that allow users to engage in different ways and obviously people are enjoying what they’re offering. 

• The Benefits of a Social Media Editorial Calendar

  • It’s a new year and you’re resolved to write quality content (and post video content) on a consistent basis.  So what do you write about?  We addressed that last week here:
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#blogpost-ideas
    Now that you’ve got some post ideas, it’s time to get organized with a social media editorial calendar.  With help from Lisa Buyer http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2136988/How-to-Create-a-Social-Media-Editorial-Calendar let’s get to work.

    Editorial calendars were a mainstay of the publishing industry.  The actual written kind.  There’s no reason to toss away the practice just because we’ve changed delivery systems.  The creation of an editorial calendar has two major benefits:  first, you are more likely to do the task if you write it down, and second, you will help to alleviate the “what do I write about this week” syndrome.

    Editorial calendars bridge together content and themes for social media and beyond:
        Blogs                Social media network messaging
        Events               Email campaigns
        Video                Web pages
        PPC
    Looking at a blank year can be pretty daunting, so start with a month.  Decide how often you’ll be creating content and begin to plan it out.  Holidays and other seasonal factors will impact your editorial.  Are there trade-shows that might impact your writings?  What are your users doing in each month?  What are they concerned about?

    Try themed months or weeks.  I recently did an “Auto” week for a different site, posting only articles that referenced auto insurance.  It’s informative for the consumer and you’d be surprised how the content flows out of you by the end of the week.  Don’t forget to update on twitter and fb with your topic as well.

    Don’t be afraid to post your calendar.  You may get offers of re-posts and maybe even an author or two that wants to do a column swap with you.  All of which is good for business.
    Here are some software applications that will help you get the job done. 
    1.     Google Calendar
    2.    WordPress Editorial Calendar
    3.    Hoot Suite – Will help with social media
    4.    21 Habit

    Make 2012 the year that organization comes to your content editorial.

• Finding Influential Twitter Users

  • Using twitter to promote your website, improve its performance, etc. is smart business.  One of the keys to twitter success is to locate the influential users within your industry.  There are various directories that aid in that process, but the two most accurate and easiest to use are WeFollow.com and Klout.com.

    WeFollow couldn’t be easier.  Type in your industry keywords into the search box and you will see the list of users that they consider to be the most influential.  You can also sort them by those with the most followers.  It’s a great way to see who’s doing what with Twitter in your field.  It should be noted that WeFollow only shows users who’ve added themselves to the directory, so some industries are more active than others.  Obviously add yourself to the directory.

    You can take the names from WeFollow and test them on Klout.  Klout is a site that says they can measure influence on twitter; you make up your own mind, but their list of clients is impressive and they use your friends to help influence your choices.

    You see, after you enter one of your influencer’s names, you will see who they are influenced by.   It’s quite fascinating actually.

    It’s also practical.  Check out the names from both sites and a picture will begin to form as to whop the influential players are in your industry. 

• Marketing Tools for Affiliate Online Lead Generation

  • Last week we ran the first set of online tools that can help make you a more successful online affiliate marketer.  But we’re not done; here are some more for your consideration.
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/affiliate-articles/internet-marketing.html#social-media-monitoring-tools
    Seesmic:  If you’re looking to have ONE place to manage all your social media efforts, Seesmic is the place.  They have applications for desktop and web, including mobile.  They also have a range of third-party plug-ins to help you manage your social media efforts from one place, thus saving you time.

    PostRank:  PostRank has recently been acquired by Google and describes themselves this way:  “The social web connects people where they share, critique and interact with content and each other. PostRank is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.
    Our platform tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to — in real-time. PostRank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.”
    PostRank is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.

    Socialseek: Get all the latest tweets, news, videos, photos, and more on any topic you want in one place. There’s a Socialseek site for everything and you can even make your own.

    SocialPointer:  A real-time social media monitoring and marketing platform that enables the user to track, monitor and respond in real-time to relevant social mentions and conversations. 
    Enables you to easily Track & Monitor Real-Time User Generated Content (UGC) about: brands, products, markets & competitors in the social media. Our unique social tracking algorithms cover more than 100+ social media properties and aggregate content from all over the social web. We constantly scan and cover: Blogs, Microblogs, News, Social bookmarks, Story submissions services, Photo & Video sharing services such as: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Google Blog search, Google news, Yahoo News and many more…in order to provide our users full social content coverage.

    Alterian SM2:  Alterian empowers organizations to create relevant, effective and engaging experiences with their audience that help build value and reinforce commitment to their brand. A leading international integrated marketing platform provider, Alterian’s unprecedented integration of analytics, content and execution through industry leading tools enables companies to build integrated communication strategies for a more personalized customer experience.

    Tweetdeck:  Tweetdeck unifies Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace to give you a convenient way to use and monitor social media. What’s nice is that when your keywords are referenced, you have an easy way to quickly respond without having to leave the program.  It’s a well laid out approach to the major social media.

    Lithium:  Helps you identify your biggest fans and engage them in your aid.  The goal is turn them into spokespersons’ of a type that will drive the conversation about your business.

    It's easy to join an affiliate network. Click to see what it's all about.

• FTC to Investigate Google

  • In a post last week, we reviewed the Google+ impact on Google search.  The article also referenced the possibility of an FTC Investigation into Google’s practices. 
    https://www.t3leads.com/en/faq-articles.html#google-merges-search-and-google--into-social-media-meteor

    According to Bloomberg News’ Sara Forden and Brian Womack, as well as other sources, it’s not a possibility anymore.  The FTC announced that it’s expanding its antitrust investigation of Google, Inc., the world’s most popular search engine, to include scrutiny of including Google+ in the search metrics.

    The question for the FTC is whether Google is favoring its own products in search results and whether that practice is a violation of antitrust laws.

    Google spokesperson Adam Kovacevich has a different take on the investigation:  “The laws are designed to help consumers benefit from innovation, not to help competitors. We believe that our improvements to search will benefit consumers by better surfacing social content, and the great thing about the openness of the Internet is that if users don’t like our service, they can easily switch to another site.”

    Danny Sullivan, founder of Search Engine Land, a website that reports on search engine marketing and optimization, joined the uproar over whether Google+ gives unfair precedence to its own service in a Jan. 11 blog post.
    “Google’s job as a search engine is to direct searchers to the most relevant information on the Web, not just to information that Google may have an interest in,” Sullivan wrote.
    “Google has faced a lot of accusations that it’s favoring its own services,” Sullivan said in an interview. “Most allegations haven’t held up. This is different. Google is suggesting to people that they may want to follow social media accounts -- but not all social media accounts, just Google’s.”

    The original issues of the FTC investigation focuses on whether favors its own products and for increasing advertising rates for competitors.  The FTC is also examining whether the company is using its control of the Android mobile operating system to discourage smartphone makers from using rivals’ applications, the person said.

• The Story Everyone is Talking About

  • Google has made mistakes in the past.  Every business has.

    But in the modern day world, there seems to be one big danger for big companies.  Arrogance.  Even the very hint of it.  This day in the beginning of January 2012, people are not talking about using Google products to get the job done.  They are talking about Google in China, in Canada (both mistakes) – and they are talking about Google messing with a service that consumers and users in general, love.
    Sound familiar?  Can you say Netflix?  This is not the same thing, but it is a slippery slope – you can lose traction quickly.  It’s a dangerous thing to tempt users to try something different.  They might just like it. 
    The other thing Google has done is add bing into the search conversation, where they were barely a blip prior to this.

    Following Google’s addition of Google+ into search, two blogs have expressed their unhappiness.  Within the last 12 hours, Gizmodo has called Bing a better search engine than Google, and Dave Winer at Scripting News said he was sick of Google's clutter and would switch to Bing if Microsoft promised not to muck it up.

    This could of course, be much ado about nothing, but a couple more “perceived miscues” from Google and they will need to examine their course.

    Keep an eye on ComScore and Experian over the next few months to see if Google opens the door for the competition.  Even if it’s just a little bit.

• Writing Better Headlines

  • By now you know the importance of writing not just solid, but superb headlines.    As long as there has been advertising they have been important, but with modern marketing they take on added importance because of SEO. 

    You can apply the following tips to your website headlines as well as to article and blog postings.
    1.     Always use active verbs.  Try to eliminate all uses of the verb “to be.” 
    2.    Use emotional words.  This works particularly well as an enticement to your site.  If you evoke an image in the mind of your reader, you’re on your way to a sale.
    3.    Test variations of the same headline.  Try turning the headline into a question.  The title of this article for instance could be “Are you writing great headlines?”  Will using percentages lead to a more compelling headline?
    4.    On your website, test different fonts, as well as character attributes such as bold.  We do not recommend Italics, as enticing as that may seem at first glance.  You can even test the use of a different color, but go easy here.  Do not have too many colors on your site, and be consistent in their use.
    5.    Can you shorten your headlines and make them better?
    6.    Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
    7.    Will the use of a quote add to your headline?
    8.    Always remember who you’re writing for.
    9.    Humor is always a good selling feature – as long as its related to what you’re talking about.

• The World of Mobile Marketing by the Numbers

  • Yahoo has released Part 1 of “Mobile Internet – Delivering on the Promise of Mobile Advertising” report this week and it is full of stats and information regarding mobile usage now and even a prediction or two for the future.

    Morgan Stanley analysts believe that by 2014 “more users globally will connect to the internet via mobile devices than with desktop PC’s.”   Numbers for 2011 are estimated to be 126 million mobile internet users or 47%.  In 2014 those numbers are expected to be 168 million and 59%.

    It also doesn’t matter where the user is.  In-home mobile internet use is almost equal to out-of-home (89%to 93%.)

    The categories of applications used is interesting.  Games leads with 61% of users having played a game with a mobile device in the last 30 days.  This study also shows that women are bigger games players than men. 

    Weather comes in at 55%, maps and search at 50%, followed by social networking and music.

    Interestingly, the study shows that iPad users are more receptive to interesting and interactive advertising.  They are more likely to look at your ads if they have video as well.  They are also more likely to interact with your ad. 

    It’s almost as if they are aware of the need for marketing, and if you do it a compelling way, they’re on board with you.

    Consumers use social media while watching big events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.  Immediately following these programs there is a spike in social media interaction as well.

    In short, mobile technology is growing and becoming a larger part of our lives every day.

• Is Social Media Saturated?

  • Recently, Aiden Hijleh wrote an article for Search Engine Journal addressing the possibility of social media saturation and how marketers should begin to pay attention to it.  What do you think?  Is it saturated?  He suggests that it is and offers a few tips in making it less so.

    He first suggests that you need to understand your audience and how they use social media.  By knowing that your market spends most of its time on Facebook, for instance, over twitter or LinkedIn, you spend most of your time engaging them on Facebook, and eliminate other sites that users use less.

    This seems true to an extent.  We also suggest you be aware of how your customer uses the various social media channels.  LinkedIn is a professional website.  It is expected to be used for that.  Facebook is more of a social website.  Yes, it is used by business, but in a clever fashion, generally speaking.  Do not overuse or abuse your “friends” or they will be certain to “unfriend”you.

    The next suggestion is to mix up your marketing by using various outlets.  Absolutely true.  It is the rare business that can grow by using just one type of media outlet.  Mix it up with traditional advertising outlets, as well as digital ones including e-mail.  This not only makes your marketing efforts more successful, but will not annoy your social media audience by over doing it.

    Engagement without being a pain in the butt.  Think of yourself as your in-laws.

• Grabbing Consumers’ Attention

  • 
    The 60 second Marketer recently published a list of the 14 most powerful and effective words in marketing.

    Affiliate marketers:  are you using some of the words below?   Where do successful marketing terms intersect with keywords?  Maybe the list will help you to mix it up when you write new AdWords ads. 
    The original source of this list is “2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success.”

    Without further ado, the 14 most powerful and effective words in marketing:
    
        Free                 Now
        You                  Save
        Money              Easy
        Guarantee        Health
        Results             New
        Love                Discovery
        Proven             Safety
    Decades of testing have shown these words to be most persuasive at getting people to choose your product over another. 
    So what do you do with this most important bit of information?  Test it.  Work with your paid search ads – re-write them, test them.  Chances are when you incorporate these into marketing plans, you will see improved results. 

• Ways to Distribute Your Blog

  • In the words of Shane Snow in a column for Mashable, “It’s never been easier to become a publisher, but being a publisher ain’t easy."

    His premise is that the scarce resource in online publishing (maybe publishing overall) is the audience.  So to get reader’s attention, what can you do?  There are some interesting tools to do that.  So, if you have a blog and are looking for ways to get your content out there, check out these suggestions and see if one or more might help you.

    1.    Outbrain:  As a publisher you provide an RSS feed or submit links and Outbrain produces headlines at the bottom of pages in major media sites.  These include CNN, Fox, Hearst and others.  Your link would be labeled as “Sponsored” or “Related.”  You pay a relatively small amount of money per click.  Less than a dime in many cases.  Exposure on the NYTimes website for that amount of money?  Priceless. 
    2.    Simple Reach:  Tries to increase social sharing with your most popular stories.  “In working on The Slide, SimpleReach realized that social signals were increasingly and overwhelmingly important in determining the content that drove the most traffic to publishers,” says Birsic. “Setting yourself up for success as a publisher must begin with a fierce focus on taking advantage of social channels.”
    3.     Zemanta:  Link Distribution: A link distribution engine that helps you with writing and preparation of your news releases and posts.  It is estimated that 75,000 bloggers use Zemanta.  
    4.    TubeMogul:  A Video Distribution Service.  You upload your video once, and TubeMogul distributes it to a wide swath of social and video networks.  Users then track their success using TubeMogul analytics. 
    5.    StumbleUpon:  Paid distribution.  We are fans here of the “what’s coming up next?” format known as StumbleUpon.  For publishers, it’s CPC and it starts at pennies per click.  It’s a winner and a good way to entice your content to go viral.

    Try these out.  You will probably find that distribution headaches become a thing of the past. 

• Are Affiliate Marketers Affected by Seasonal Keywords?

  • An article appearing in dailyseotip.com ignited a question in our mind.  Do seasonal keywords play a role in affiliate marketing for payday loans or for online auto insurance? 
    Let’s see what we can come up with.

    Industries such as heating and air conditioning contractors are easy to illustrate.  In the late spring and summer the keywords of air conditioning contractors and a/c repairs, and various other combinations will be extremely important.  In the winter, look for furnace, heating system repair and combos in that family, to be ranked high.

    Certainly in holiday shopping season, consumer electronics and the latest in children’s toys will rank high.

    So what does this have to do with online payday loans?  Let’s take a look.  The holidays are over, but the bills are not.  Online payday loans are busier than ever in many areas this time of year.  So rather than the usual “payday loans online” do the keywords, “Christmas debt” or “Christmas loans” pop up?  Holiday debt?

    Focusing on these will not make you rich but if you are a low ranking beginner, it might be wise to ‘search out’  lower ranking keywords and try to be at the top of those, rather than attempting to jump to the top of the most popular keywords.

    Online insurance begs the same question.  Are their seasonal trends?  You betcha.  This will vary by region of the country, but certainly home sales have their slow and busy times.  Auto sales vary from month to month as well. 

    Become aware of the seasonal ups and down of other lines as well.

    In short, it would be wise to test rotating your keywords seasonally.  Don’t drop out of places where you have high rankings, but feel free to tweek a little. 

• Write Better Web Posts

  • Quality article and blog writing becomes more important to a business’ success every day.  You know by now, that great post writing is more than writing a great post.  It involves planning and execution.

    Take the time to discover the keywords and topics that fit your industry.  Write purposefully with those in mind.  Write to increase search engine rankings and to attract new users.

    Optimize your titles.  Yes, with an “s.”  If you have a great one for your post to entice people to read the article, great, use it.  But in this case use your title tag (page title) to make the page more search engine friendly.

    What does your URL slug look like?  Check it and if it’s a mess, change it.  If you use WordPress, change it by going into Settings -> Permalinks in your WP Admin, you’ll see the option to edit how your URLs appear when published.  

    Keep in mind that users like shorter URL’s.

    Page descriptions are really, really important.  They are often the deciding factor as to whether or not someone clicks on your search engine display.  Think about how you use search engines.  The page description makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

    Optimize images in your posts.  Use a unique title and ALT text so search engines can find you.  This will give you better rankings in image searches.

    Interlink with older posts.  This not only aids in getting new users familiar with your work before they met you, but it is also drives up your search rankings.

    If you use WordPress they have an SEO plugin to help you.  Take advantage of it.  There is a whole lot to remember to writing good posts.  If you can find some free help along the way, take advantage of it.

• Google+ Traffic Increases in 4th Qtr 2011

  • According to Chitika Insights, who has covered Google+ since its launch, overall online activity increased 118% September to November.

    Recent reports have ranged from rumor of Google+’s demise to them taking over the world (only slight exaggerations.)  It does seem that following the invitation-only launch and an initial burst when they opened to the public, that interest was weak.  But Google has clearly not given up.

    Gabe Donnini for SEJ, Search Engine Journal, offers three key reasons for the growth.

    Google is successfully integrating Google+ across its wide range of products, including android, Google Apps and in Search.

    They are advertising on different online outlets and with television spots in an effort to draw in more users.

    They are Google and they are committed to it.

    Keep in mind that facebook has over 800 million users worldwide.  The latest numbers for Google+ say 65 million.  There is still no doubt that this is an uphill battle, but the market is too full of possibilities to expect Google to give up.  It’s another piece of their rather large puzzle and one with a huge possibility for profit.
    
    New reports suggest there are an estimated 62 million users on the social network, and our traffic index indicates a clear rise in activity as well. However, because Google holds raw data proprietary, they will be the only source to tell us if the activity is based on active users or new user sign ups.

• Affiliate Marketers: It’s not Just the Payout

  • When choosing an affiliate network, it helps if you have a good feeling about what you’ll be selling.  You’re going to be immersed in it most of your days, so you need to have some positive engagement with the product.

    When you go into business with an affiliate marketer, and make no mistake, for all intents and purposes, you are going into business with them; you need a strong personal relationship with them.  Like any other business, you need to have good working relationships with the employees at the affiliate network.  Can you get ahold of your manager when you need them?  Do they respond to e-mails?

    Consider how easy it is to get into the network.  Do they want a track record of success?  If so, that’s not the place to start.  If you’re a beginner, look for a network that doesn’t have a verification process to accept their affiliates.

    Do research on the affiliate networks you are considering.  Do they pay?  And do it on time?  See what other affiliates have to say about them.  Is their site appealing to you?  How long have they been around?  Is the staff knowledgeable and do they want to see you grow?

    In short, look for a quality, honest firm that wants to do business with you.

    Ricky Ahuja compiled this list for Digital Moses Confidential.

• Who Owns Your/Their Twitter Account?

  • That’s the question in a nutshell, isn’t it?  A lawsuit has been brought by a company (PhoneDog) who says a former employee (Noah Kravitz)continued to use a twitter account after moving on to another job and caused harm by disclosing trade secrets and damaging the “company’s business, goodwill and reputation.”

    Kravitz says that he set up the account and that he linked it to his personal account and maintained both while employed for 4 years by PhoneDog.  He adds, "it's this melding of personal and professional which is why I've gained a modest following," Kravitz said. "Because it's not just the dry headline and link to something."

    Beyond this underlying skirmish is a bunch of “he said, they said. “

    But, it brings up a valid discussion point.  As work and personal media continue to mix, how does that affect both employee and employer and who owns what?  This will only grow as an issue as more and more companies allow employees to use their personal tech (tablets, phones, etc) in the office setting.

    If you have employees it is a topic you should discuss with your attorney and set up criteria that hopefully will avoid legal issues further down the road.

    If the lawsuit is not settled, the case will be heard in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California.

• Story Ads to Appear in Facebook News Feed in 2012

  • A pretty big change is coming to the Facebook experience next year in the form of sponsored stories (ads) in the user news feed.  They last placed ads there in 2008, so it’s a safe bet most people don’t remember them.

    Their frequency at this point is low, with a user seeing no more than one story per day.  The stories will also have a connection to the user as facebook will only place stories about friends or pages that the user already likes.  There will no ability to opt out, although you can hit the “x” to remove individual ads.

    Advertisers are of course salivating at the opportunity to have their material, which will look very much like organic material, in the news feed where users will be exposed to it in a very natural way.

    So how do you think people will react?  This is at first glance nowhere near the overhaul that Netflix attempted and which rather infamously failed miserably, but do you think there will be backlash to this?  Or is the current level of one ad per day low enough to not infringe upon the current experience?  More questions than answers at this point, but it is most definitely a topic we will keep our eye on.

• The Latest on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)

  • If you’re in a business that requires the use of the internet, and after all, who isn’t it?  Then you are probably aware of SOPA, the internet piracy/censorship bill in committee in the US House of Representatives.  But then again, you may not be.  And, therein lies part of the problem.  Most people are not familiar with the proposed law and certainly are not aware to the extent that if passed, it would change their lives.

    A quick example – you post a video of your dog chasing its tail while a movie visibly plays in the background on your TV.  Under this new law, you could be committing fraud.  Before you say, “that would never happen,” you should know who’s behind the law.  The music labels and movie studios are the primary business entities pushing for its passing.

    On Thursday, December 15, 2011, Google co-founder and persistent bill attacker, Sergey
    Brin, made his strongest comments yet.  He posted a statement on google+ blasting censorship in China and Iran.  He followed that with, “thus, imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States.”

    He called out two provisions of the bill; first, the government could censor search results “without so much as a proper court trial” and a second, that would provide the ability to “hijack” domain names.

    To learn more, I’m quite sure if you “google” SOPA you will be awarded a bounty of links to the proposed law and its effects if passed. 

• Where People Gather Local Business Information

  • The Pew Research Center has released a new report that studied the media habits, both new and traditional, of consumers to see how they accessed local business information.  Overall, 60% of the respondents said that they look for information on local businesses, and of those, 47% said the internet is the source of choice; 30% said newspapers; 22% said word of mouth and just 8% said local TV, either on air, or via their websites.  We should point out that this part of the study did not include bars and nightclubs as a local business.

    Interestingly, 36% of the searchers used search engines, but only 16% used speciality websites and a shockingly low 1% said they relied on social media.

    A sketch of the type of people who are researching local businesses may provide some surprises.  Most are aged 30-65.  Most are white, 63%, Hispanic 56% and black 52%.  72% of the researchers had a household income over $75,000.  Not surprisingly, the more education they have completed, the more likely they are to conduct research.  48% have not graduated high school, while 73% of the respondents were college graduates. 
    61% said they used their cell phone to access information, while 64% said they used a tablet.  If you were waiting for data to justify a mobile application, look no further.

• What is foursquare and how can it help me?

  • Now that Foursquare has announced it now has 15 million users, maybe we should take  a minute to introduce ourselves, and see if they can help us.

    Foursquare is one of a new sect of media, called geo-social.  Foursquare describes themselves as “a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore.  By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges.  Foursquare guides real-world experiences by allowing users to bookmark information about venues that they want to visit and surfacing relevant suggestions about nearby venues.  Merchants and brands leverage the foursquare platform by utilizing a wide set of tools to obtain, engage, and retain customers and audiences.”

    Pages are free and very easy to create.  Your fans “follow” you much like they do on Twitter.   Many of the organizations offer “badges” which mark achievements that a person gets of performing real-life actions.  Foursquare approves the badges and they’re designed to “support a healthy lifestyle, increase cultural exposure, allow you to share your passions with your friends or add some humor to your daily life.”  There is a fee for the badges, but check the process out on the site and you may find that it will be beneficial to you.

    Overall the site shows where members are geographically, both consumer and business.  It’s an interesting concept and one that is growing in popularity.  Facebook just bought “Gowalla” a smaller geo-social company, so the market is definitely there.  Check into it to see if it can benefit you.

• The Building Blocks of SEO

  • There is so much talk of SEO because it is so important, and it’s constantly changing.  That’s why we try to help keep you updated and to present new ways to think about tackling one of the most important factors affecting the success of your online enterprise.

    First is keyword research.  It’s a given and it’s constant.  Check all the tools available including Google adwords, of course, but also check customer communications as well to keep updated on new keyword combinations.

    Link building is essential.  Back links to your own site from other credible sites will help your SEO rank.  Either you need to do it, or hire a consultant to help, but good link building will improve your rank.

    Quality copywriting is the difference between bad link farms and a site rich with material that pople will want to seek out and share.  Learn what quality copywriting is and its benefits to your enterprise.  If you’re looking for writers place an ad on Craigslist.  Check out writing samples and get ready for the increased business.

    And finally, web design.  From your choice of a technical platform to the flow of the pages, make sure your site is clean and easy to navigate.  Test it frequently and not just by you, but have others test it.  Flow problems are often easier to identify when someone else aids in the testing.

• Cyber Monday crushes last year’s sales

  • Retailers are happy because black Friday and Cyber Monday saw strong gains over 2010.  Online sales for Monday saw a 33% gain over the same day last year; online sales for black Friday saw gains over 29%.  These numbers were beyond the expectations of even the greatest optimist.  Black Friday saw $800 million in online spending.

    Mobile purchases saw huge increases in Thanksgiving and black Friday.  17.04 percent of online consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailer's site, and 9.51 percent used their mobile device to make a purchase, IBM reported.  The purchases were led by the iPhone and iPad.

    This is a great start, but how the rest of the season will play out is anybody’s guess.  Do consumers have any cash left?  Will retailers slash prices to draw customers?  We’ll know a month from now.

• FTC and Facebook Near Agreement

  • Reports indicate that the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are near an agreement which would force Facebook to make some major changes relating to its privacy settings.  Essentially the social network would have to ask customer permission before making information public.

    In 2009 Facebook made sweeping changes to its privacy settings, which in part did not allow people to make certain settings private, including profile pictures and city of residence.  This prompted a flurry of complaints to the FTC.

    Recently the FTC has hammered out deals with Google and Twitter regarding the types of information they can gather, distribute, etc.

    It’s safe to say that these discussions are a new part of life that are here to stay.

• More Mobile Shopping This Holiday Season

  • The results of InsightExpress’ 3rd quarter digital consumer portrait found that 32% of consumers plan to use their mobile devices to research products and 27% plan to use them to read reviews while in the store.  In November it is expected that 15% of the people who log onto a retailer’s site will use their mobile device. By way of comparison in October, 11% of retail store visits were done from a mobile device.

    A clear demonstration of the way consumers shop is the fact that 77% of all retail site visits now originate from a tablet.  To think they didn’t even exist five years ago.

• Amazon.com Ballot Initiative May be Forthcoming

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    In the wake of California's recently enacted "Amazon.com tax," the giant Internet retailer has launched a ballot initiative drive intended to repeal the new law.

    Amazon.com has already contributed over $5 million toward the group calling itself More Jobs Not Taxes. Their objective is to qualify a ballot initiative for the June 2012 election. The initiative would repeal the state's new Internet sales tax law.
    
    More Jobs Not Taxes needs to gather 504,760 valid signatures by Sept. 27, 2011 to qualify the measure for the June, 2012 election.
    
    Thus far Amazon is the reportedly the only major financial contributor for the campaign.
    
    In June, the state Legislature passed a law requiring out-of-state Internet retailers to collect sales tax from California customers if the retailers paid commissions to California-based affiliate marketing websites. As a result of the new law, Amazon pulled the plug on some 25,000 affiliate marketing relationships. The retailer believed that was more appealing move than collecting the sales tax from California affiliates.
    
    The law also requires sales tax to be collected from online retailers with subsidiaries in California. This provision applies to businesses such as the one that developed the Amazon's Kindle, for example.
    
    Amazon.com amassing about 20 percent of its business from online affiliate arrangements.
    
    In 1992 the U.S. Supreme Court decided states may not tax businesses without a physical presence in that state. Based on that ruling, Amazon.com claims the new California sales tax law is unconstitutional.
    
    Other states, including New York, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Illinois, Arkansas and Connecticut have enacted similar sales tax laws. Amazon is involved in litigation with the state of New York over its law.

• Brand Building Versus Lead Generation

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    The marketing term "brand" is tossed about a lot -- and its usage is not always accurate. A brand can be any entity -- it can be a business, website, entertainer, politician, sports team, etc. Basically, a brand is any feeling or general concept that is elicited when one thinks about that particular entity. Tom Hanks has a strong, likable brand. Paris Hilton probably does not. Facebook has a brand position of a massively successful Internet-related enterprise. Classmates.com has a brand image of a social networking site that was successful but got lost in the shuffle when Facebook began to dominate their category.

    Many marketing executives use the term brand incorrectly. They may often discuss their desire to create their firm's brand, when they are actually more interested in a lead generation marketing strategy. Lead generation is not brand-building. The two terms are not synonomous. A company may develop a brand identity over time after several years of aggressive lead generation advertising. Usually, these firms acquire a brand image of a low-price leader in their business category because they have spent years telling consumers how they can save money by switching to their company.
    
    It takes a massive investment of money and resources to develop a brand. That is why start-up companies are foolish to think they can compete with the major brands in their category on a head-to-head brand-awareness ad campaign. Instead, smaller firms or start-ups should focus on other marketing tactics that will grow their business. These tactics may include:
    
        * Public relations
        * Community outreach
        * Internet marketing (PPC advertising, SEO strategies, blogging, etc.)
        * Joint marketing partnerships with other firms
        * ... and, lead-generation/direct response advertising
    
    There is a formula for all lead generation advertising. If a marketer sticks to this formula then the chances for success improve considerably. That formula is called the "AIDA" theory:
    
        A -- Grab the consumer's attention (i.e., hard-hitting headline, catchy graphics or images)
        I -- Generate interest in your product or service (i.e., the benefits of your company)
        D -- Demonstrate why consumers should purchase your product or service (i.e., testimonials, price comparisons)
        A -- Give the consumer a visible call to action (i.e., phone number, website address, email address)
    
    Adhering to the AIDA rule does not guarantee success. There are many other factors: budget, demographic, advertising message, targeted geographic region, ad media, etc., etc.
    
    Eventually, if you stick with a long-term commitment to direct response advertising, your company may develop a brand and your company can begin launching branding ad strategies to reinforce that brand. But you need to be patient.
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• Protect Your Brand from .xxx Adult Sites

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    If you do not want your company's website brand associated with the adult Internet industry, then you need to read this article:

    Beginning September 7, trademark holders will be able to block the use of their trademarks from being used as a .xxx domain name (i.e., “www.INSURANCE.xxx").
    
    This new .xxx top-level Internet domain has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for use by the online adult entertainment industry.
    
    To protect trademark owners who do not want their trademarks associated with the .xxx extension, ICM Registry LLC will maintain a list of trademarks that will be unavailable for use by the adult entertainment community and the general public.
    
    To add your trademark to the protected list, a trademark owners must  place the reservation request and pay the associated fee before October 28, 2011.
    
    The trademarks subject to successful reservation requests will be removed from the .xxx domain names available for registration for a minimum of 10 years.
    
    If a brand registers for the unavailable list, and a consumer enters “www.INSURANCE.xxx, then they will be directed to a webpage explaining the domain name is not available for registration or use.   
    
    From September 7 to October 28, adult entertainment websites will be able to submit applications to register their .xxx domain names. If any applications are submitted to register a .xxx domain name that impedes on another trademark, then the trademark owner will be notified.
    
    The rightful trademark owner will be given priority for the .xxx domain. And, the adult entertainment site will be on notice of the trademark owner’s objections for purposes of any future dispute over the domain name.
    
    In November, trademark owners outside the adult entertainment community will have an opportunity to register .xxx domain names, and starting in December, the general public will have the opportunity to register .xxx domain names.
    
    Using this simple blocking procedure, at a minimum, puts an interested adult entertainment community member on notice of your trademark rights and, at best, prevents members of that community, other trademark owners and the general public from registering and using your trademark in an unauthorized domain name. This window of opportunity closes on October 28, 2011.
    
    It's tough to tell how likely it is that an adult entertainment company may attempt to purchase an .xxx domain for non-adult web brands. But with so many domain variations out there, this may be something all brands should consider.

• Playing the Personal Information Game

  • Online marketing professionals must be extremely cautious when it comes to personal data. From the marketers' perspective, they want to be able to crunch that data as much as possible in order to analyze every aspect of their online campaigns. But, due to privacy concerns associated with personal data obtain through online marketing, there are limits to how this information may be utilized.
    
    Any online merchant must make the protection of personal data a top priority. Of course, this is vital from a legal standpoint -- but it is also important from an ethical and business standpoint, as well. After all, you want your customers to trust you .. you want them to refer others .. and you want repeat business. None of that will happen if the customer does not trust you will protect their personal information.
    
    So -- what puts the customer at ease? It starts with the questions. Most consumers are OK providing basic information: name, age, interests, etc. When asking about age, use an age range. That is more acceptable to most consumers. It is also important to express your gratitude whenever a consumer submits any inquiry or order form. Show them you appreciate their business or their input.
    
    If you are surveying consumers with the objective of determining what offers to make, it is important to ask the right questions. For example, if you are marketing vacation rental properties, the questions should be focused on the types of follow-up offers you will want to send: Do you prefer to vacation in the mountains or near the water? Do you prefer hotels or rental homes? Do you like to gamble? You get the idea. Most consumers will not mind responding to soft-sell questions.
    
    Possibly the most important way to show your commitment to online data security is to display the logos and links of your website security vendors: TrustE, Verisign, McAfee, etc. This will go a long way toward assuring the consumer that you are taking every possible step to keep their information secure.

• Amazon Tax Not Going Over Very Well in CA

  • According to a report on the website wizbangblog.com, there's a mass exodus of businesses escaping from California. Why? Blame it on the "Amazon tax."
    
    The article cites Big Government.com, which reports that over 70 Internet affiliate marketing firms that conduct business with online retailers such as Amazon.com have packed their bags and relocated out of the state.  The report notes that many other online affiliate marketers have simply discontinued their California operation.
    
    As you are probably aware, California recently passed the “Amazon tax” law, which requires Internet retailers to pay sales tax on revenue generated by its California affiliates.  The law was intended to generate additional tax revenue for the cash-starved state. The end-result does not appear to be very positive thus far.
    
    Many of those who supported the Amazon tax law believed the threats from online retailers who said they would have to leave the state or go out of business were idle threats. They called the retailers' bluff -- but it appears so far the retailers were not bluffing.

• Study Shows Marketers Must Evolve to Satisfy Customers

  • A survey conducted by IBM and Forbes has shown customers are evolving quickly and they are becoming more savvy, demanding instant transactions and engaging through multiple touch-points. How are marketing experts addressing the evolution of customer awareness?
    
    The report covered questions such as:
    * Why customer-centric marketing has become such a huge priority—and whether or not budgets are keeping up
    * What's causing the increase in online spending, and where that money will be allocated to get the best results
    * Why data will be driving decision-making, and how marketers will deal with the increased scrutiny
    * How top marketers are using technology breakthroughs to understand the influence of every campaign—beyond basic acquisition and conversion
    
    According to the study:
    
    • Marketers’ priorities are customer-centric. More than half (52 percent) cited customer retention as their top current priority, followed by customer acquisition (38 percent), and customer profitability (29 percent). These will remain top priorities a year from now.
    
    • Marketing budgets mirror these priorities. About four in ten executives (39 percent) are dedicating the largest chunk of their funds to customer retention; customer acquisition runs a close second (36 percent).
    
    • Online tactics will see significant lifts in budgets. Over the next year, 56 percent will increase their online marketing spend, 54 percent will increase their social media spend, and 50 percent will increase their mobile marketing spend.
    
    • Greater emphasis is being placed on data-based decisions. Nearly half of respondents are increasing their spending on business intelligence, and 78 percent say there is greater scrutiny placed on what works and what doesn’t than there was a year ago.
    
    • Marketers are challenged to understand the influence of their campaigns beyond the basic metrics of acquisition and conversion. Top performers are using technology to get at these results and optimize their channels.
    
    • Marketers are not always clear on what tools they need to meet their top challenges. Respondents admit being concerned about their ability to get a deeper understanding of customer interactions or obtain an integrated view of customer behavior. But there appears to be a disconnect in how they solve that issue, as the tools that could help—reconciling multiple online marketing applications and lack on an integrated marketing suite—are at the bottom of their list of concerns.
    
    • Marketing is moving at light speed, but most marketers are not watching or adjusting their campaigns accordingly. Just 9 percent review their online marketing performance in real time, and only 9 percent adjust their campaigns in real time.
    
    • Top performers are more proactive in tracking and adjusting their campaigns. Among companies that said their investment in marketing technology was “world class,” 27 percent track their performance in real time, and 39 percent adjust their campaign performance in real time.
    
    • While nearly two thirds of respondents said they segment and target customers based on an integrated view of customer behavior, that view is not necessarily complete. Just 30 percent have a view of mobile behavior, and just 34 percent look at social media behavior.
    
    For more information, visit: http://measure.coremetrics.com/corem/form/wpdownload

• Make Your Website a Business Growth Tool

  • If your website is not optimized and functional enough to help your company make sales, then you are leaving a lot of potential revenue on the table.
    
    Sure, traditional advertising media -- TV, radio, print, direct mail, billboards -- can still be used effectively to help grow your business. But Internet marketing should be a vital component to your overall marketing stragegy.
    
    In order to turn your website into a major profit center, consider the following tactics:
    
    * Create a professional-looking site that reflects your business and provides enough "sizzle" to keep your website visitors interested.
    
    * Just like with all other forms of advertising, the consumer will decide instantly whether they will be interested in your message. Hit them hard as soon as they enter your website with something appealing and catchy.
    
    * Direct response advertising (and, let's face it, websites are a form of DR advertising) requires that you provide a strong call to action. Make it easy for the consumer to contact you; and make the buying process as user-friendly as possible.
    
    * Utilize tesmimonials and demonstrations as much as possible to convince website visitors that they should take advantage of your products and services.
    
    * Offer something for free. "Free" is still one of the most effective words in marketing. Whether it is a free insurance quote, a free report, a free gift, etc., consider providing something for free to our customers.
    
    * Maintain a good customer list. Offer a blog and keep the email addresses of those who post comments. Your customer records will be one of the most important assets of your business. Use your lists wisely to cross-sell, for referrals, etc.
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• "Amazon" Tax Moving Forward ... For Now

  • California's Board of Equalization has begin the process of figuring out how to enforce the new state "Amazon" tax.
    
    The "Amazon" tax is the budget-relted mandate requiring online California retailers to fork out sales tax on purchases made by state residents.
    
    As state officials prepare to implement the new tax law, opponents are gathering their resources in an attempt to overturn the tax law.
    
    Paperwork has already been filed by those who want to torpedo ABX1 (the "Amazon" tax law). Their objective is to ask voters in the next statewide election to overturn the tax mandate.
    
    If the ballot initiative is successful, the rug would be pulled out of the effort to generate more state revenue from online retailers.

• Repairing Damaged Email Lists

  • Attention Internet marketers -- or any marketing professional, for that matter -- who use email as a lead-generation tool! It's time to conduct an email list check-up.
     
    The quality of your email list may be the most important factor in the return on investment on your email marketing efforts. But, marketing managers do not cleanse and review their lists often enough.
    
    MarketingSherpa has reported that about one-third of companies are experiencing a dip in the effectiveness of their email results. The primary reason for the decline is because the email list is aging. As consmers change jobs, physical addresses, etc., their primary email box often changes, as well. And, as many employees have lost their jobs, a higher percentage of email addresses have also changed.
    
    There are several actions you may want to take to fortify your email list:
    
    * When adding new addresses to your list, find a quality email list scrubbing company. These firms will make sure the data collected is accurate and was obtained legally.
    * Make sure your list meets your prospective customer demographics. Otherwise, even if the consumer replies to your email blast, they may not be the type of customer you are seeking.
    * Carefully track the results of your email campaigns. You may want to split your campaigns up into smaller segments to you can more accurately track the results of each campaign.* Do not automatically add a new email address to your list. Send a test email to the address to make sure it is not spam.
    * Send a change of address update to your list, asking for more accurate email addresses. This is a good way to reintroduce your company or make new offers, as well.

• Understanding Affiliate Payout Options

  • Internet publishers who venture into the affiliate marketing arena should clearly understand the various forms of payout options available from affiliate networks such as T3LEADS.
    
    Affiliate marketing has experienced massive growth over the past decade -- and there is no end in sight for the industry. Online merchants are finding affiliate marketing an excellent, cost-effective way to generate quality new business leads.
    
    When deciding on an affiliate network to work with, one of the most imporant criteria is the payout methods. There are various ways in which affiliate marketers pay for leads, depending on the quality of the leads:
    
    * Pay-per-click (PPC): This is a very common form of payouts for many affiliate programs. Its name basically describes the theory -- publishers are paid for each click-through to a merchant's site. Usually, PPC payouts are not very high, but affiliates are assured some sort of payment for any quality of lead generated, even if it does not result in a sale or even a legitimate customer.
    
    * Pay-per-sale: The pay-per-sale concept may have originated with Amazon.com. It rewards affiliates that generate traffic, provided that traffic results in a sale. In essence, the payout is a commission paid to affiliates. Payouts are typically much higher on pay-per-sale arrangements than PPC. Another term for pay-per-sale is "performa." In other words, the payout is based on the performance of the leads.
    
    * Pay-per-lead: Pay-per-lead payout amounts usually fall somewhere between PPC and pay-per-sale. These are slightly more valuable leads for merchants, since they are from consumers who have actually expressed an interest in their product or service.
    
    Whether you are a merchant or an affiliate, you need to do your homeowner to determine the most cost-effective payout system for your businesss. Evaluate many areas, including what the competition offers, the potential return on investment, the up-front costs associated with generating various types of leads, etc.

• Amazon Pulls the Plug on CA Affiliate Program

  • Amazon.com has notified its 25,000 California affiliate marketing participants (Amazon Associates) of the company's intentions to  terminate their Amazon affiliate contracts. The giant online retailer is taking this action in response to the recently passed Golden State budget that was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. There is a provision in the budget that calls for online retailers to pay tax on revenue generated by affiliate-related sales.
    
    Such a tax would clearly have a major impact on Amazon. When similar laws were enacted in Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina, Arkansas and Rhode Island, Amazon packed its bag in those states, as well.
    
    The State of California hopes to generate about $200 million in additional sales tax revenue per year from the affiliate marketing sales tax. The state has been trying to mend a multi-billion-dollar shortfall in its budget.
    
    New York has imposed a similar tax, but Amazon continues to run its Amazon Associates program in the Empire state. However, Amazon is is embroiled in a lawsuit against New York State.
    
    Amazon’s California affiliate contracts will be terminated when the legislation takes effect.
    
    Amazon's notice stated:
    
    "We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
    
    "As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective."

• "PURLS" of Wisdom

  • Does your marketing program include PURLS? If not, you may want to look into a PURL campaign.
    
    What is a PURL? A PURL is a personalized web page. PURLS have become a very popular way to marketers to communicate directly with customers or prospects. The concept is that you create a personalized web page for your customers that can be used to promote products, add images, articles and videos, and much more.
    
    A PURL is an excellent tool to help enhance direct mail response rates. It allows the marketer to create a custom page for every prospect on your mailing list. It eliminates the need to user names and passwords and provides a customized look for each customer or prospect. A sample PURL may look something like: www.amazingwebsite.com/janesmith
    
    How exactly does an PURL direct mail campaign help to improve your return on investment?
    
    Let's say your company has been running standard direct mailings, with a business reply card, website address and a toll-free number for prospects to respond to the mail piece. When you utilize PURLS, you are directly the prospect to a web page customized specifically for each prospect. The personalized URL is much more appealing because customers are drawn to the customized web page with their own name in the domain.
    
    A personalized URL can also save marketers a ton of money.s are a great way to drive prospects to your web site to provide them with additional information. Rather than creating a gazillion page direct mail campaign and throwing everything imaginable at your prospect, you can mail a smaller package and send him to his own unique web page instead. Because the PURL uses basically the same techniques as variable data printing, each web page can be completely personalized for the individual.

    A PURL campaign works well in conjunction with email marketing campaigns. Simply use personalized URLs in your email messages to entice your prospects to click for more information. The link will take them to their very own customized PURL. 

    Give PURLs a shot. There are many vendors available to help develop your PURL campaign. They may help to greatly enhance your marketing efforts.

• SEO Tactics for Start-Up Web Publishers

  • So -- you're just launching your web publishing and affiliate marketing enterprise, or you are operating on a shoe-string budget. You don't have a ton of cash to spend on a costly SEO specialist. What are some ways the beginning affiliate marketers can enhance their search optimization without breaking their budget?
    
    Keyword Analysis: There are some excellent, free or inexpensive tools available online that can help you find potentially useful keywords and phrases. Google AdWords is the most popular of these tools. You may also want to visit your competitors' websites. Take a peek at the keywords that have on each page. sometimes the keywords are visible for anyone to see. Just right-click on each page to see the source and the HTML of the page. ctrl+F will then allow you to search the text on each page.
    
    Another tool you may want to check out is Market Samurai. It's not free -- about $99 -- but it will help you track the level of competition for certain keywords and phrases.
    
    Articles: Content -- articles, blogs, press releases, etc. -- is very important to winning the SEO game. Many publishers look to other sources for content. The price tag for these article could add up, and the content is may not be exactly what you want. You may not be a professional writer, but most publishers at least know what they want and can communicate fairly well in writing. Give article writing a shot. If you are uncomfortable doing it alone, ask an associate or someone you can trust to review your work. It could end up saving you a bundle on content-related expenses.
    
    H1 Tags: H1 tags will improve your search engine rankings. An accurate H1 tag will help search engines to determine how the web page wil be viewed. Only one H1 tag per page, and make sure the content uses the correct markup for the tag. A free resource for markups W3Schools.
    
    Link Building: While you have to be careful when adding links to make sure they are pertinent to your site (Google will penalize sites that practice "link farming"), adding back links and posting a link to your site from various blogs may be a helpful tool in enhancing your SEO.
    
    Read, Read, Read: There is so much information on the Internet that can be useful to your SEO efforts. Take the time to conduct some valuable research online. Look for SEO blogs. Try to connect with experts in the field who may be willing to share their thoughts. This may be the most powerful tool of all the ones mentioned in this article.

• How to Determine the Best Domain Name

  • Coming up with the perfect domain name is more difficult than it may appear.
    
    What is the url that conveys your products and services; and also attracts the most website visitors? And, with millions and millions of domains already in use, how can make sure the perfect domain is even available?
    
    Check out these pointers for determining the right domain for your website:
    
    Do not ...
    * ... use a trademarked name in your url. The brand name you are trying to utilize will eventually find out; and you will be in hot water.
    * ... repeat letters too frequently (i.e., jimssledssvc.com). This appears confusing to the consumer. 
    * ... create lengthy domains. The shorter the better.
    * ... incorporate prepositions in your domain (and, or, between, etc.).
    * ... use unnecesary words such as website, online, unless these words are part of the company name.
    
    Do ...
    * ... try to utilize the more common suffixes: .com, .org, .net. The .com suffix is best, if available. Although new suffixes will soon be unveiled, consumers are most familiar with these top-line extensions.
    * ... search for domain auctions for names that may be perfect for your business. Existing domains may already be optimized, which could greatly help to enhance your visitor traffic.
    * ... find domains that are loaded with the critical keywords for your online business.
    * ... create a name that is unique and easy to remember.
    * ... make the domain name brief and to the point.
    * ... register the domains for several years, if you intend to be in business for the long-run.
    
    Is it worthwhile to purchase numerous domain names for the same website? Yes. But make sure the use of numerous domains on the same site does not negatively impact your search rankings.

• FTC To Update Internet Sales Guide

  • The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced it will be updating its advisory guide on how advertising laws pertain to Internet e-commerce. It's been over a decade (2000, to be precise) since the FTC came out with its “Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising.” Clearly, e-commerce has changed dramatically since 2000, and the FTC wants to address some of the more pertinent Internet sales and marketing topics impacting consumers.
    
    The FTC is looking for public input on the legal and technical aspects of the Guide revisions. Comments must be provided by July 11, 2011.
    
    Check out the information on the Dot Com Disclosure Guide, courtesy of the FTC:
    
    The primary focus of the 2000 publication was to counsel marketers on how to provide clear and conspicuous disclosures of information that consumers needed in order to make informed decisions about goods and services being offered on the Internet.
    
    Specifically, “Dot Com Disclosures” advised online advertisers that the same consumer protection laws that apply to commercial activities in other media apply online, and that any disclosures required to prevent an advertisement from being misleading must be clear and conspicuous. It focused on how required disclosures may be presented clearly and conspicuously in online advertisements, and provided key considerations for evaluating their effectiveness. The business guide discussed, in the context of online advertisements, the traditional factors used to evaluate whether disclosures are likely to be clear and conspicuous, including: the placement of the disclosure in an advertisement and its proximity to the relevant claim; the prominence of the disclosure; whether items in other parts of the advertisement distract attention from the disclosure; whether the advertisement is so lengthy that the disclosure needs to be repeated; whether disclosures in audio messages are presented in an adequate volume and cadence, and visual disclosures appear for a sufficient duration; and, whether the language of the disclosure is understandable to the intended audience. The document’s appendix contained mock advertisements that illustrated these particular factors.
    
    The 2000 publication also addressed specific issues that arise from application of certain Commission rules and guides to Internet activities and the use of what were then new technologies to comply with those rules and guides. For example, some rules and guides use certain terms – such as “written,” “writing,” and “printed” – that connote words or information on paper. The document explained that those rules and guides that apply to written advertisements or printed materials also apply to visual text displayed on the Internet.
    
    In addition, the FTC guide discussed the circumstances in which businesses may use email to comply with a Commission rule or guide requirement to provide or send required notices or documents to consumers.
    
    The online world has changed dramatically since “Dot Com Disclosures” was first issued. Eleven years ago, mobile marketing was just a vision, there was not an “App” economy, the use of “pop-up blockers” was not widespread, and online social networking was nowhere as sophisticated or extensive as it is today.
    
    Accordingly, the staff is considering updating and reissuing “Dot Com Disclosures” in order to provide guidance to businesses about how FTC law applies to current online activities.
    
    Although the Commission has gained substantial experience over the past decade with how online advertisers make claims and disclosures, the staff welcomes all comments on the 2000 publication and the issues it addresses, and has also identified the following questions on which it has a particular interest in obtaining the public’s views:
    
    1. What issues have been raised by online technologies or Internet activities or features that have emerged since the business guide was issued (e.g., mobile marketing, including screen size) that should be addressed in a revised guidance document?
    
    2. What issues raised by new technologies or Internet activities or features on the horizon should be addressed in a revised business guide?
    
    3. What issues raised by new laws or regulations should be addressed in a revised guidance document?
    
    4. What research or other information regarding the online marketplace, online advertising techniques, or consumer online behavior should the staff consider in revising “Dot Com Disclosures”?
    
    5. What research or other information regarding the effectiveness of disclosures – and, in particular, online disclosures – should the staff consider in revising “Dot Com Disclosures”?
    
    6. What specific types of online disclosures, if any, raise unique issues that should be considered separately from general disclosure requirements?
    
    7. What guidance in the original “Dot Com Disclosures” document is outdated or unnecessary?
    
    8. What guidance in “Dot Com Disclosures” should be clarified, expanded, strengthened, or limited?
    
    9. What issues relating to disclosures have arisen from such multi-party selling arrangements in Internet commerce as (1) established online sellers providing a platform for other firms to market and sell their products online, (2) website operators being compensated for referring consumers to other Internet sites that offer products and services, and (3) other affiliate marketing arrangements?
    
    10. What additional issues or principles relating to online advertising should be addressed in the business guidance document?
    
    11. What other changes, if any, should be made to “Dot Com Disclosures”?
    
    You can file a comment addressing the guide and the above questions either online or on paper. For the Commission to consider your comment, it must be received on or before July 11, 2011. Write “Dot Com Disclosures, P114506” on your comment. Your comment – including your name and your state – will be placed on the public record of this proceeding, including, to the extent practicable, on the public Commission website, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. There are several rules regarding the submission of comments, so make you you review them prior to your submission.

• Federal Internet Privacy Bill Introduced

  • If H.R. 1528 is enacted, it would have a major impact on Internet marketers who collect personal information online.
    
    H.R. 1528 has been dubbed the Consumer Privacy Protection Act of 2011, and was introduced on April 19. The law would apply to persons that collect, by any means, through any medium, sell or use personally identifiable information. That includes names, email addresses, telephone/mobile numbers.
    
    The measure would impact any Internet marketer who collects data from more than 5,000 consumers during any consecutive 12-month time frame.
    
    The Act does not apply to government agencies would be exempt from the law, as well as data processing outsourcing entities. That includes firms that provide information technology processing, web hosting or telecommunications services to another entity. Also exempted are providers of professional services.
    
    The measure would mandate that organizations provide consumers with a privacy notice that is clear, conspicuous, prominently displayed and explicit. The privacy policy would have to contain statements as to the identity of the covered entity (or class of entity) that may collect or use the data, the types of information that may be collected or used, how it may be collected or used and the extent to which the data is sold or disclosed.
    
    H.R. 1528 would stipulate that consumers must be provided with an opportunity to preclude the sale or disclosure of the their data to another covered entity.
    
    The Federal Trade Commission may approve programs to allow self-regulation of the Act's provisions. Violations of the Act could result in a maximum penalty of $500,000 for all related incidents.

• FTC Goes After Huge Internet Marketer

  • The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is targeting Jesse Willms for alleged illegal affiliate marketing practices that reportedly helped Willms to net a staggering $467 million.
    
    Willms, who hails from Canada, started his affiliate marketing empire when he was a teen. Still only 24, Willms self-promotes himself as a philanthropist who donates gobs of money to causes such as the Canadian Red Cross, forest fire victims and various youth charities.
    
    So, why is Willms in the FTC's cross hairs?
    
    The FTC action is against Willms, as well as 10 companies he controls. The filing was made May 16, 2011, and it seeks to prevent any further alleged illegal marketing practices and to force Willms to repay customers.
    
    The fraud allegations accuse Willms of deceptively attracting customers through free offers for products such as acai berry weightloss pills, teeth whitener, free credit reports, government grants and a home-based businesses.
    
    Willms' companies are accused of sending spam emails and ads, promoting free trials that only required a minor shipping and handling fee. But, the FTC claims after the consumer's credit card information was obtained, they were often charged for the free trial, plus recurring monthly fees. These types of charges without customer consent are a violation of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act.
    
    In a statement on his website, Willms defended his marketing tactics: "Our companies give consumers the opportunity to buy a variety of products and services at significant savings. Our business is based on the loyalty and longevity of our customer relationships ... This loyalty, in part, is earned through compliant business practices and disclosures that are both clear and conspicuous."

• Do-Not-Track Bill Introduced

  • A federal legislative measure has been introduced that would ban Internet companies from following the online actions of consumers who register for a "do-not-track" service.
    
    Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is sponsoring the “Do-No-Track Online Act of 2011” (S 913), which would allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to develop regulations regarding the do-not-track registration service, including the registration method and the rules for companies that access consumer online data. State attorneys general and the FTC would enforce the regulations.
    
    Senator Rockefeller commented, “Recent reports of privacy invasions have made it imperative that we do more to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to their personal information.”
    
    Senator Al Franken (D-MI) also chimed in: “Consumers have a fundamental right to know what data is being collected about them." He added, “And yet reports that the information on our mobile devices is not being protected in the way it should be.” Testifying in this hearing were, among others, the FTC, the Department of Justice, Google, Inc., and Apple, Inc. Copies of the witnesses written testimony is available online.

• E-commerce Basics

  • The average consumer will decide within five seconds whether they are interested in a particular website. So, if your e-commerce site does not have an immediate impact on the consumer, they will quickly move on to another site.
    
    E-commerce sites must be both graphically attractive and highly functional and user-friendly. A professional website will enable even the smallest business to appear massive to its customers.
    
    Here are some additional components to a quality e-commerce website:
    
    * Make sure your product inventory is always up-to-date
    * Include clear and concise product descriptions
    * Include ample photos
    * Offer competitive prices
    * Maintain an accurate and up-to-date customer and prospective customer list, and conduct regular marketing campaigns to the lists
    * Include customer testimonials and product reviews
    * Provide a shipping price calculator, if applicable
    * Add as much pertinent content as possible: blogs, articles, links, etc.
    * Make sure site visitors can easily submit queries or phone calls; and respond immediately to all customer inquiries
    * Take advantage of state-of-the-art communication technology such as live chats
    * Lenient return/exchange policies
    
    While it may cost less than a bricks-and-mortar store, an e-commerce website does come with its share of expenses. Make sure you allocate resources for:
    
    * Design and programming
    * Hosting services
    * Search Engine Optimization
    * Pay Per Click advertising
    * Web analytics
    * Social media marketing
    * Email marketing
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• Online Marketing Techniques for Spanish-Speaking Consumers

  •  
    With the numbers and percentage of Hispanic Americans skyrocketing, Internet businesses would be wise to develop targeted marketing efforts to attract this substantial segment of U.S. consumers.
    
    The 2010 Census revealed the U.S. Hispanic population soared by 43 percent from 2000 to 2010. There are now 50.5 million Hispanics officially living in the U.S., compared with 35.3 million in 2000. Latinos now comprise 16 percent of the nation's total population of 308.7 million.
    
    Following are several suggestions for Internet marketers to help them take advanage of the rise in the Hispanic consumer population:
    
    1. Make sure phone operations provide Spanish-speaking options -- either through live operators or automated greetings.
    
    2. Prepare bi-lingual marketing material and website text, and offer customers the choice. Some Spanish-speaking customers prefer to communicate in English, so do not assume they will want the Spanish text.
    
    3. Advertise that your firm communicates in Spanish. Incorporate this simple message into all your websites, social networks, advertisements, storefront signage, etc.
    
    4. Help educate non-Spanish-speaking employees in basic Spanish. Hispanic customers will appreciate the effort, even if the employee cannot conduct a full conversation in Spanish.
    
    5. Run PPC ads in Spanish and English.
    
    Want another compelling reason to market to the Hispanic marketplace? According to Jupiter Research, online Hispanic purchases are expected to hit the $21.6 billion mark in 2011. Don't miss out on this booming segment of the U.S. consumer population.

• Backlink Tip for New/Revised Websites

  • The vast majority of businesses have undergone numerous website changes and enhancements over the lifespan of their site. Think about how your website may be looked waaaay back in the mid-90s when the Internet boom exploded. Chances are your site is dramatically different -- and chances are good it will evolve many more times over the next decade. But one aspect of every website that should remain fairly consistent is the backlinks.
    
    Too often, when a newly revised website is launched, the old backlinks are trashed. Unfortunately, it's highly possible that your old backlinks provided some value to your site; and therefore they should not be wiped clean when a new site is launched or when your old site is renovated.
    
    Restoring your website's backlinks can be a time-consuming process. Thus, before you hastily discard your old site, remember to check out your Google Webmaster tool, which include a report the sites that link to your site.  If a site has been around for any number of years, there could potentially be hundreds of backlinks linked to your site that are helping to enhance your website's organic search results. Wipe out the backlinks, and your search status could seriously plummet.

• Internet Marketing 101

  • Just beginning to dip your big toe into the deep waters of Internet marketing?  If you want to launch an affiliate marketing business or an online merchant operation, there is a lot to learn in order to compete with the millions of other Internet sites.
    
    Internet marketing is still a relatively obscure science. The vast majority of consumers and businesses are still caught up in the world of traditional marketing: television, direct mail, newspapers, magazines, outdoor. More and more, firms are beginning to realize the old marketing tactics are simply not as effective anymore. They know they must venture into the world of the Internet, but many novice Internet marketers have a difficult time figuring out where to begin.
    
    If you are faced with this challenge, here are a few pointers to help you get started:
    
    * Read, read, read. Gather as much intelligence as possible about Internet marketing, your competitors and their tactics. Talk with experts. Read blogs. Look into social networking. Be a sponge.
    
    * Be patient. Unless you are very fortunate, you will not stike gold immediately. Begin will small ad campaigns that will not cost an arm and a leg. You will make mistakes. Learn from them and make adjustments every step of the way.
    
    * Stick with what works. There's an old advertising saying -- 'I know 50 percent of my advertising works -- I just don't know which 50 percent that is.' To be an effective marketing pro, you need to know how your money is being spent. Continue to invest in the areas that work; and get out the ones that do not.
    
    * Test, test, test. An excellent way to determine the most effective tactics is to run concurrent tests. Make sure the results are easy to track.
    
    * Two heads are better than one. Some business persons work better solo; others work well with partners. If you find another Internet marketer with similar goals and products, you may want to look into a potential partnership. Maybe you can pigy-back on the success of a competitor. Make sure you both bring equally important assets to the partnership. And, make sure the business venture is clearly spelled out to avoid any possible legal hassles. 

• Web Searches Skyrocketing in U.S.

  • Americans continue to be more and more entranced with Internet searches.
    
    comScore has recently reported that during March 2011, almost 19 billion search queries were entered by Americans. The study shows the number of searches performed by U.S. residents has grown steadily in 2011. The research is an indication that search engine research is not losing its luster, even with the meteoric rise of social media.
    
    Google -- of course -- is by far the top search engine; with 64 percent of the U.S. search market. Over 12 billion Google searches were conducted in March, 2011. The marketshare of Yahoo! and Bing are both on the rise. Those two search engines comprise 26.4 percent of the American search volume, with 5 billion searches.

• Google Explains “Why These Ads?”

  • Google announced improvements to “provide greater transparency and choice regarding the ads you see on Google search and Gmail.”  According to their blog, Google says that soon you will be able to learn more about the ads by clinking on the “Why These Ads?” link next to the ads on your search results and Gmail.

    Google says when you click the link you will be given information about why you’re seeing the ad and why it’s personalized for you. 
    You will also be able to go to the “Ads Preferences Manager” to make changes to what you are seeing, such as blocking companies you have no interest in, or by blocking the personalization process entirely.

    It has a vague feeling to it so far, but let’s see how it will play out and how fast changes are made.

• Google+ Pages Introduced

  • Google has introduced Google+ Pages, a public page designed for any entity – from companies and clubs to rock bands and even the TV program, Anderson Cooper 360.

    The “direct connect” feature allows people to go directly to the Google search engine site and type in +, followed by the page (entity) you’re looking for and it will take you directly there.

    How exactly this will affect search results is unclear.  It’s not hard to envision that entities that set up a Google+ page will come out ahead in the SEO game.  Certainly that is not part of the equation at this point, but you may find that “getting-in early” will have its advantages.

• Is your Website Main Page Designed Well?

  • This time of year is when many of us conduct much of our business.  Your website main page has to be understandable, organized and clear in its intent in order to be effective.  With all that said, this is a good time to review your website and make sure it’s working as hard for you as it should.

    As compiled by Tim Ash, of ClickZ, here goes:
    1.    Is what’s most important given the proper prominence?
    2.    Be consistent in style.  Do not mix line art and photos.  Use high quality images, but make sure they are small enough to load quickly.
    3.    Do not use horizontal lines or make abrupt color changes.  This will make your reader think something is finished and they will stop further engagement.
    4.    Avoid animation and flash.  Slows things up, makes viewers leave site.
    5.    Make sure the most important information is “above the fold.”  Don’t make the viewer have to scroll down to get to your most important information.
    6.    Use color in a judicious manner, but please use it.  Choose colors carefully.  Don’t place reverse type in a box (white type in a red box for instance.)  It is too hard to read.
    7.    Choose images that complement the content on the page.  Do not add images just for the sake of doing so.  Make sure the images have a reason for being there. 

• Astounding Facts and Figures about Social Media

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    We've all heard about the astronomical growth of social media over the past couple years. Just how extensive is this social media explosion? Check out some of the amazing social media facts and figures:

    * Number of Facebook users: 695 million (or, just about the combined populations of the United States, Indonesia and Brazil -- the world's third, fourth and fifth most populous nations).
    
    * Number of LinkedIn users: 148 million (or, more than the entire population of Russia).
    
    * Number of Twitter tweets per day: 140 million (or, about one tweet for every dollar that Donald Trump is worth).
    
    * Combined number of social media visitors per month for LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook: 2.5 billion (or, a number equal to about 35 percent of the world's population)
    
    * Total active Internet blogs: 164 million (or, slightly more than the current entire U.S. work force).
    
    Who could have predicted this type of massive growth for the social networking phenomenon?

• SEO Tips for Bing Users

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    ?

    Much of the search engine optimization resources are often geared toward enhancing a website's Google search results. Let's face it, Google is the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to search engine marketing. However, Bing and Yahoo! are major players, as well, and online marketers should not avoid them.

    What are some ideas online marketers should examine in order to enhance their SEO for Bing and Yahoo!? Check out the following suggestions:
    
    Before you walk, you must crawl ... Your webiste's XML stamps need to be enabled in order for web crawlers to view your site content. If this is not happening, search engines will not be able to index your content. You may want to look into robots.txt files for some assistance.
    
    Avoid the "website maze"...Your website should be functional and easy to meaeuver for website visitors. Make it simple for visitors to post comments, place orders and find the products and services you are marketing.
    
    The "write" stuff...Effective SEO always involves constant, fresh, unique content. That means your site must incude a ton of articles, videos, links, images and text. Consistently update your content in order to continuously enhance your rankings.
    
    You're only as strong as your weakest link...Your SEO strategy should include a link building program. It will help to insert targeted keywords into the link's text anchor. This will enhance the visibility of your links.
    
    Of course, there are a ton of other ideas that will help to enhance your SEO efforts on all search engine. We encourage you to conduct more research n the topic and continuously try new methods for improving your search rankings. And remember, while Google rankings are important, you should also pay close attention to what is happening on Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines.

• What is "Mocial" Marketing?

  • It seems new Internet-related buzz words pop up nearly every day. One of the latest Internet marketing terms is "mocial marketing."
    
    Mocial marketing can be defined as the combination of mobile marketing and social network marketing. When someone uses their mobile phone to access Facebook or Twitter, they are mocial networking.
    
    There are many ways in which marketers can utilize mocial networking to enhance your business growth. Check out some mocial marketing toughts:
    
    * A Harris Interactive study indicated consumers who received some form of permission-based text marketing from a company, 34 percent of those who were sent a marketing text message have visited that website -- and, they are 27 percent more apt to buy from that company.
    
    * Mocial marketing allows for more effective one-on-one communication. This has proven to be far more beneficial than mass-marketing.
    
    * Mocial marketing provides merchants with the ability to contact consumers when they are most interested in their product or service. For example, the customer clicks on a link from Facebook and fills out a form requesting auto insurance information. As soon as the consumer clicks the submit button an agent receives a text message to contact the customer. An immediate connection is made precisely when the consumer is interested in making a purchase.
    
    * Mocial marketing may be a more trusted form of advertising from the consumer's perspective. Mobile and social marketers employ strong privacy policies so that they are only communicating with those who are part of their networks. Therefore, the cumbersome "opt-in" process is often streamlined with mocial marketing.
    
    * Mocial marketing can accomplish numerous marketing objectives: to gain customer loyalty ... to encourage users to spread the word about products and services to others in their network ... or simply to generate more sales.
    
    * As with all tech-related advances, the time to act is now. Before you know it, your competition will be gaining an advantage over you because they have implemented an effective mocial marketing program.

• YouTube May be Used Heavily for the 2012 Presidential Election

  • YouTube is already planning to be a major player in the 2012 Presidential Election.  On Jan. 12 a Republican primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, will be steaming live on YouTube. It's all part of a larger scale effort to take advantage of the online video phenomenon.
    
    Recently, YouTube unveiled Town Hall, a virtual debate platform intended to allow members of Congress to debate each other on various political issues. YouTube will allow users to recommend debate topics.
    
    The initial Town Hall participants will include Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Tom Udall (D-NM), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Harry Reid (D-NV).
    
    YouTube has become very popular among legislators. Data shows over 90 percent of Congress has a YouTube channel. In addition, the majority of the existing Presidential hopefuls will have a YouTube channel, as well.

• Targeted Search Terms May be a Goldmine

  • Having a tough time bidding on the most popular keywords and search terms for your online business? Are the PPC costs getting too expensive for your budget?
    
    You may want to consider more niche keywords.
    
    Typically, the more generic the keyword, the more expensive it is. That makes sense, since you want to attract the consumers who are using the most obvious search terms. But if you are a small local insurance agent, for example, you are going to be bidding on the generic terms such as "auto insurance" or "insurance" against mammouth companies such as Geico, State Farm, Progressive, etc. It is nearly impossible to rank high when competing head-to-head with multi-billion-dollar companies.
    
    But niched keywors may be far more efficient and can actually generate a better return on investment, depending on your service/product and strategy. After all, is it better to rank number 10 on a search that returns 200 potential websites; or number 1,000 on a search that returns 2,000 sites? Of course, it's far better to appear on page one, no matter what the search term.
    
    Local businesses can very effectively utilize their region or city as a niche. For example, "Sacramento auto insurance" may generate 100 potential websites and the cost may only be a few dollars per click to appear on page one.
    
    Another suggestion is to fine-tune your niche. Do you sell clothing/apparel? Maybe a targeted PPC campaign that focuses on your hottest sellers will drive a ton of traffic to your site.
    
    Another benefit of niche-related PPC marketing is that it will likely help to improve your organic search results, as well. After all, if you are driving more traffic to your site, search engines will take note and usually improve your organic rankings.
    
    In addition, targeted keyword campaigns may help to improve your closing ratio. How so? Consumers will have a better idea what to look for on your website. If you are marketing a generic term like "clothing," consumers may get lost in your site. But, if you are pitching your line of swimwear you will attract consumers looking for those specific products.

• All About Alexa

  • Do you know your website's Alexa ranking? If not, you should become familiar with Alexa.
    
    Alexa (http://www.alexa.com) computes traffic rankings by analyzing the web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from a variety of traffic data sources. The information is crunched through a sophisticated process and rankings are determined.
    
    According to the Alexa website, the traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.
    
    Traffic is computed for sites, which are typically defined at the domain level. For example, the Web hosts www.msn.com, carpoint.msn.com and slate.msn.com are all treated as part of the same site, because they all reside on the same domain, msn.com. An exception is blogs or personal home pages, which are treated separately if they can be automatically identified as such from the URLs in question. Also, sites which are found to be serving the same content (mirrors) are generally counted together as the same site.
    
    Alexa measures a website's reach (i.e., the number of users). Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28 percent, this means that of all global Internet users measured by Alexa, 28 percent of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa's one-week and three-month average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. The three-month change is determined by comparing a site's current reach with its values from three months ago.
    
    Alexa also measures page views -- the number of pages viewed by site visitors. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the visitors to the site. The three-month change is determined by comparing a site's current page view numbers with those from three months ago.
    
    The trend graph shows the site's daily traffic rank, charted over time. The daily traffic rank reflects the traffic to the site based on data for a single day. In contrast, the main traffic rank shown in the Alexa Toolbar and elsewhere in the service is calculated from three months of aggregate traffic data.
    
    Sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa. Alexa's data comes from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users and other traffic data sources; however, the size of the Web and concentration of users on the most popular sites make it difficult to accurately determine the ranking of sites with fewer than 1,000 monthly visitors. Generally, traffic rankings of 100,000 and above should be regarded as not reliable. Conversely, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its traffic ranking becomes.
    
    There are additional features offered by Alexa. It will benefit your site to obtain a high Alexa ranking, so it is important to understand the various aspects of Alexa.com.

• Game-Changer: eBay Purchases Zong

  • eBay Inc. has announced the acquisition of Zong Ins. for $240 million.
    
    Menlo Park, CA-based Zong provides social and virtual games such as Zynga Inc., IMVU Inc., Walt Disney Co.’s Playdom Inc., Stardoll AB, IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s Zwinky and Shanda Games Ltd.’s Mochi Media. Zong is also the firm that sell's Facebook's virtual currency.
    
    The acquisition of Zong wil help to facilitate gamer-related mobile communication transactions for eBay’s PayPal system. As more gaming is taking place on mobile devices, the payment platforms for these transactions has become a vital component of the virtual gaming industry. PayPal is expected to process about $3 billion in mobile payments in 2011.
    
    Zong works with some 250 mobile carriers, facilitating the purchase of items charged to the mobile device bill. These partnerships give Zong access to over 3 billion mobile users.
    
    It is expected that Google and Intuit will become major competitors to eBay in the mobile payment arena, since both firms are in the process of developing their own mobile payment systems.
    
    The eBay-Zong deal is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2011.

• Bing and Yahoo Gaining Strength in Organic Searches

  • The search agency Rosetta has completed a survey of organic search traffic to their customers' sites in order to gauge the organic clicks generated through the major search engines -- Yahoo, Bing and Google. According to the research, Bing and Yahoo appear to major factors when it comes to financial services and retail searches.
    
    The study was conducted from January through May, 2001. It measured the percentage of organic-referred visits coming to client sites, and divided it by industry vertical. 
    
    The data indicated a significant shift from other studies from Experian Hitwise™ and comScore™. comScore’s “Explicit Core Search” report from May 2011 shows that of all search engine visits, 65% occurred at Google, with 14% and 16% happening at Bing and Yahoo sites, respectively.
    
    The Rosetta study, however, shows that although all industries and verticals can benefit from Google searches, marketers should also focus on Bing and Yahoo as a valuable source of leads or conversions. The Rosetta "Organic Search Market Share Report" differs from Hitwise and comScore because Rosetta focused on the actual organic traffic delivered to client sites from each of the three major search engines; and Rosetta organized the data by industry vertical.
    
    Summary of findings:
    
    * Although Google led for all verticals, generating an average of 65 percent of the search traffic for verticals, some verticals such as pharmaceutical sites received as much as 75 percent of their actual traffic from Google.
    
    * The biggest surprise came from the financial services vertical, which only received 54 percent of its traffic from Google. The financial services vertical had the highest percentage of traffic from Bing and Yahoo, with 18 percent coming from Bing and 22 percent from Yahoo.
    
    * Rosetta's retail clients received nearly one-fourth of their non-Google search traffic from Bing-powered Yahoo results.hoo results.
    
    The study examined over 10 million organic-referred search engine visits from January through May 2011. Rosetta says it expects to issue this report at least three times per year.

• PPC Click-Through Suggestions

  • When conducting pay-per-click ad campaigns, is it wise to simply out-bid the competition on your key search terms?  Not always.
    
    Google AdWords, for example, will base paid search rankings on additional criteria such as click-through rates. In other words, AdWords places a priority on sites that are more relevant for the search terms. If your site sells auto insurance, for example, and your PPC ad uses competitors' names, you wil not likely get many click-throughs because the PPC ad is not relevant to your site.
    
    Therefore, your PPC strategy must be two-fold:
    
    1) make sure your bids are high enough so that your ad appears among the top listings; and
    2) make sure your PPC ads and search terms are relevant to your site so that you generate a high click-through rate.
    
    Some PPC experts also recommend that you utilize unique search terms. This may be especially helpful if you are in a highly competitive business category where the bidding for the more popular terms is extremely high. Dig deep and spend some time trying to find those hidden gems that may help to elevate your positioning and your click-through rate.
    
    Another strategy is to incorporate prices or potential savings in your PPC ad. This may be particularly effective for products such as auto insurance, where price savings is a major buying factor for consumers.

• Online Ad Spending Rises in Q2

  • Online advertising is one segment of the economy that is definitely not suffereing.
    
    Online ad spending grew considerably during the second quarter of 2011 across all channels, according to the digital ad firm IgnitionOne (formerly SearchIgnite).
    
    IgnitionOne found increases in year-over-year spend across all three major online media channels, including paid search, display and Facebook.
    
    Facebook ad spending is up 22% year-over-year on a same-client-basis, with impressions up 11%. Furthermore, Facebook advertising has experienced high rates of growth from new marketer adoption in the past year, contributing a 280% increase in spend across all clients and a 200% increase in impressions year-over-year.
    
    That said, spending patterns within an advertiser's campaign life cycle on Facebook show marked growth declines after the first few months, suggesting that advertisers are still in a "test and learn" phase with the new and immature ad platform.
    
    Google also saw strong gains during the quarter for its AdEx display platform. Google grew to an 80% share of all U.S. search advertising spend in the second quarter, compared with Yahoo/Bing at a 19% share. Google also saw dominating growth in other key search metrics, including impressions, clicks, CTR and eCPM. What's more, Google's AdEx now commands 51% share of U.S. RTB display spend, compared to Yahoo's Right Media at a 49% share. Year-over-year, "This marks a significant jump in Google's market share in display," IgnitionOne noted.
    
    U.S. paid-search spending rose 12% year-over-year in the second quarter, while growth was flat quarter-over-year, according to IgnitionOne.
    
    The quarter began strongly, but dipped sharply in June to nearly flat growth on a year-over-year basis.
    
    IgnitionOne noted, "While this decline did not have a major impact on the quarter overall, it could be an indicator of future months' performance. Expectations for the third quarter of the year are now cautiously optimistic."

• Twitter and Facebook are Major Factors in Buying Decisions

  • Nearly two-thirds of Twitter users admit they make purchases based on what they view on Twitter. Facebook is nearly as effective as a buying factor, with 56 percent of Facebook users surveyed noting the social network giant has an impact on their purchases.
    
    The research firm Compete conducted the study. It found 56.2 percent of consumers visit a retailer’s Facebook page for info on sales and promotions. In addition:
    
    * 29 percent click on Facebook pages to conduct research on retailers.
    * 26.4 percent visit a retailer's FB page when it appears in a friend's news feed and they "liked" that page.
    * 13.7 percent go to Facebook pages because they enjoy shopping from a certain retailer.
    * 13.6 percent want to connect with others who like that retail store.
    
    The study shows Twitter has a similar powerful impact on consumers:
    
    * 58.7 percent read Twitter feeds to to learn about sales and promotions.
    * 32.9 percent read about specific retailers.
    * 24.1 percent read tweets because they like a certain retailer.
    * 23.2 percent read certain tweets to  connect with other people who like the retailer.
    
    Compete study shows that during the spring of 2011, 10 percent of respondents check out retailer Twitter feeds at least once a month. That's a slight drop from 11 percent in the spring of 2010.
    
    Twelve percent of the survey respondants follow between 6 and 10 retailers or consumer products on Twitter; 5 percent follow between 11 and 30; and 6 percent follow more than 30 products or retailers.
    
    The Compete research showed Facebook is an excellent cost-efficient marketing tool for providing consumer spending habits.

• Hot New Emarketing Tools

  • All top emarketers are eager to learn about new and innovative tools available to help generate more website traffic and improve their bottom line. You no doubt are utilizing social networking tools, Goodle AdWords, etc. But what about some other products that can be useful?
    
    Below are a bunch of interesting new tools that may benefit your emarketing efforts:
    
    1. Rank Tracker: A product of SEOmoz, this is a free tool that allows users to monitor websites rankings for specific keywords. This could be an excellent way to keep tabs on how these keywords are working.
    
    2. Business Link Ecommerce Guide: An essential resource for online marketing best practices.
    
    3. Spyfu: This tool gives you a glimpse into your competitors' paid search campaigns. It allows you to search by domain and displays Google AdWords campaigns, phrases that are being used and organic rankings.
    
    4. Copyscape Plagiarism Checker: Are you buying articles from an outside source, or are you not certain about the originality of certain content? This tool gives users a way to assure themselves that the content is fresh.
    
    5. SurveyMonkey: This allows you to survey your website visitors and customers on your site, products, services, etc. It's a very useful tool to help marketers understand how best to tweak their products and websites.
    
    6. HootSuite: This tool allows users to track visitor and customer activity across a variety of social networks.
    
    7. SEOmoz GeoTarget tool: Another free product that allows users to determine relevant search terms for geographic locations. It is an excellent tool for localizing your search marketing.
    
    8. Hitwise: An online consumer analysis tool, Hitwise provides a variety of reports on about 165 industries. This kind of research can be extremely useful to any online marketer.
    
    9. Nielsen: This company has been around for years, tracking several different media sources. Its marketing data tracks consumer activity in 52 different countries.
    
    There are many more tools on the market, and more products are popping up on a consistent basis. Keep your eyes peeled for innovative new tools that can help your ecommerce business.

• Tricks of the Trade: Email Ideas

  • How can you get more prospects to open your email notices? How can you get them to respond to your email?
    
    Email is still a relatively new method for communicating with prospective and existing customers. And, new tactics are being implemented all the time in order to improve email marketing results.
    
    Check out some ideas below that may help you to enhance your ROI from your email campaigns:
    
    * Allow email recipients to correct or change their email address. Consumers are constantly changing or added new addresses and you want to make sure you are reaching the addresses that are the most frequently opened.
    
    * Give the recipient an option for how frequently they want you communicate with them. For example, if you have a daily newsletter, maybe you should also offer a weekly recap newsletter for those who do not want to receive as many notices.
    
    * Allow the recipients to check off the areas that interest them the most. If you market insurance products, auto loans, stock tips, car alarms and GPS systems, maybe you can allow the prospect to only receive email notices for the ones that appeal to them. This will help to cut down on unwanted email, and the customer will appreciate your thoughtfulness.
    
    * Always have a comment box -- and make sure you truly review the comments. They may offer some valuable ideas for your marketing efforts.
    
    * An excellent way to obtain quality feedback on your products and services is to send a "sorry to see you go" email to those who opt-out. Ask for comments as to why they are opting out of your email notices. Again -- this feedback can be very helpful.
    
    * Many email blasts now include images and graphics. Make sure the images are not increasing the size of the email to the point where it could slow down some servers. Consumers are not patient. If it takes too long to open an email they will frequently just delete the notice -- and they may ask to opt-out, as well.
    
    * Take the time to produce different email text for specific offers. Avoid emails that attempt to blanket all products and services into one notification. Those all-in-one notices may be too cumbersome to review and you could be losing too many good prospects as a result. Short and simple is much better than long-winded and wordy.
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• Affiliate Marketing Start-up Expenses

  • You have no doubt heard how inexpensive it is to get started in the world of affiliate marketing. Is this a true statement; or are there hidden costs that are not revealed to the start-up affilate marketer?
    
    Check out this list of affiliate marketing start-up expenses, and decide for yourself:
    
    1. Overhead: A home computer is basically the only hard cost you will need to get your online business off the ground.
    
    There are some online businesses that may require some additional up-front overhead investment, especially if you are distributing products yourself and need to acquire an inventory to begin.
    
    But, we will assume that since you are reading this article you already have a computer and an Internet connection. Therefore, the hard cost for equipment should be negligible.
    
    * Membership Fees: This cost will depend on the affiliate marketing programs you want to join. Many of these programs are free to join. Some require a fee that may run from $10 to $30 or so. Others require some sort of production requirement.
    
    * Domain Name/Hosting: You will definitely incur some expenses to purchase your domain names  and hosting package. Domains cost anywhere from $10 to $30 a year. Hosting packages cost up to about $25 per month. Shop around and read the fine print to make sure you buy a package that meets your needs.
    
    * Advertising: It will cost money to market your business. You may opt for pay-per-click, social media marketing, call centers, etc. Any way you slice it, advertising will comprise a considerable chunk of your business expense. Expect to forkout a minimum of $100 per month to get your lead generation efforts off the ground.
    
    * Autoresponder: This is the software that enables you to send email  blasts to customers and prospects directly from your website. It is a very useful tool that will streamline your marketing efforts, but it may run you around $20 a month.
    
    You may incur miscellaneous other expenses. You may hire an SEO manager. You may need to upgrade your computer. But, altogether, the costs associated with launching an affiliate marketing business should be fairly manageable.
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• Embrace Social Media

  • Some marketing managers may still consider social media a gimmick that is best left to celebrities or old high school flames trying to reconnect. But if you are over-looking the value of social media then you are omitting a potentially powerful tool in your online marketing arsenal.
    
    There are many ways in which social media may help enhance your online marketing efforts, including:
    
    1. Search engine optimization: Website links from social media pages are an increasingly important factor to many search engines.
    
    2. Most of today's customers expect to be able to find you on Facebook or Twitter. If you're not there, consumers may view your business as out-of-touch.
    
    3. There are numerous tools available on social media sites that will enable online marketers to enhance their target marketing efforts. These tools include geograhic, age, gender, hobbies, interests, profession and other demographic details that are very helpful to most online marketers.
    
    4. Social media is an excellent way to expand the visibility of your press releases and other public relations activities.
    
    5. When you utilize social media sites on a consistent basis, you will signiicantly enhance your brand name. Consumers will begin to specifically look for your brand instead of stumbling on your site through a generic search.

• Facebook Display Ad Revenue Will Surpass $2 Billion This Year

  • Social media giant Facebook is set to become the largest seller on online display advertising in the nation.
    
    eMarketer is reporting Facebook’s online U.S. display ad revenue will hit $2.2 billion in 2011, pushing the social network past Yahoo! as the top online display ad company in the country.
    
    Facebook’s online display ad has experienced massive, consistent growth. In 2009 its display ad revenue soared by 164.1 percent; and in 2010 it grew again by 117.8 percent. This year Facebook's display ad revenue will increase by another 80.9 percent. According to eMarketer, the growth should flatten out a bit to 31.3 percent in 2012.
    
    By the end of the year, Facebook should hold 17.7 percent of U.S. online display ad marketshare. eMarketer predicts Yahoo! will have a 13.1 percent marketshare at the conclusion of the year.

• Online Marketing Used More Frequently by Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses

  • Affinity Express Inc., a provider of high-volume print and interactive advertising solutions, has released the results of its survey of small- to medium-sized business (SMB) customers. The study measured SMB online advertising and marketing strategies; and found that online marketing is a growing component of SMB marketing tactics.
    
    The survey results showed:
    
    * Sixty-three percent of those surveyed have used online advertising or marketing for their business. Website and landing pages is the most commonly used tactic, used by 77 percent of respondents, with email marketing following closely (73 percent). Half of the respondents use social media marketing (50 percent); 31 percent use search engine optimization; 27 percent use online catalogs; 23 percent use display ads; 23 percent use blogging; 19 percent do search ads; 15 percent use mobile advertising.
    
    * An interesting find is the low use of search engine optimization compared to the prevalence of websites and landing pages as a marketing tactic. This indicates SMBs are focusing on developing websites and landing pages, but not on optimizing those pages to get found in search results.
    
    * Sales is the most important focus for a small business owner (36 percent voted it the most important objective of their online advertising or marketing activities), and drives her marketing strategy. However, 23 percent of the respondents indicated brand awareness was most important. Less important tactics include: lead generation (14 percent), lead nurturing (9 percent), customer service (9 percent), reputation management (5 percent) and customer lifetime value (5 percent).
    
    * The focus on sales might be partly why SMB owners don’t rate online tactics as very effective. Only 12 percent consider online advertising and marketing very effective and 44% admit it is somewhat effective. Thirty-six percent rate online tactics somewhat ineffective for their businesses, while 8 percent consider it very ineffective.
    
    * Even though search engine optimization isn’t used by a high percentage of SMBs, it emerged as the most effective tactic with 33 percent voting it very effective. Website and landing pages are at a distant second (16 percent), followed closely by email marketing (15 percent), online display ads (13 percent), search ads (13 percent), online catalogs (13 percent), and mobile (12 percent). Surprisingly, social media marketing (9 percent) and blogging (6 percent) are considered the least effective tactics, according to the study.
    
    * The biggest challenge SMBs face with online marketing is the high cost of external resources (27 percent), followed closely by insufficient expertise (25 percent) and lack of measurable ROI (25 percent). Lack of in-house resources is the most significant issue for 20 percent of respondents and lack of buy-in from management is only an issue with 2 percent.
    
    * fifty-seven percent of respondents have internal teams manage online advertising and marketing and 48 percent use online do-it-yourself services. Twenty-two percent use outsourcing providers, 4 percent use freelance providers.
    
    * Despite the perceived low effectiveness of online marketing, 84 percent of respondents say they plan to use online marketing in 2011.
    
    Almost all the survey respondents are owners or employees of a small business, with over half of the businesses employing 2-10 people and 26 percent employing only one person. Only 8 percent of the businesses have more than 500 employees. Five percent each have 11-100 and 101-500 employees respectively.
    
    Approximately 70 SMBs responded to the Affinity Express study.

• Yodle Acquires ProfitFuel

  • Yodle has announced the acquisition of ProfitFuel, Inc. Yodel is an Internet marketing company, headquartered in New York. Texas-based ProfitFuel is a major provider of local search engine optimization services to small businesses. ProfitFuel boasts over 11,000 small business clients. Outrank is the company's core product. It helps to generate inexpensive inbound phone calls and emails by helping to raise its clients' search engine rankings.
    
    The acquisition of ProfitFuel allows Yodle to grow its sales force to service a broader set of clients with smaller marketing budgets. The ProfitFuel purchase will give Yodle a team of some 300 sales persons.
    
    David Rubin, who has been serving as ProfitFuel CEO, will become Yodle's senior vice president of sales. Prior to serving for ProfitFuel, Rubin was the founder/CEO of HomeCity, an online real estate brokerage.
    
    ProfitFuel was launched in 2000, and the company now has 220 employees.
    
    Yodle was named #35 on the INC 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the U.S.

• The Groupon Whiz-Kid

  • Is Andrew Mason the new Mark Zuckerberg?
    
    At 29 years old, Mason, the founder of online coupon giant Groupon, may become the next Internet billionaire.
    
    Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1981, Mason founded Groupon in 2008. But his rise to prominence in the dot-com world was not quite as meteoric as Facebook chief Zuckerberg's.
    
    Mason attended Northwestern University, where he studied -- believe it or not -- music. His interest in software development came later, as he saw friends and associates taking advantage of e-commerce opportunities.
    
    In 2006, Mason began attending the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, but after only three months he dropped out of the school. Soon after Mason developed The Point, a web service for fundraising activities.
    
    After the success of The Policy, Mason launched Groupon in '08. The premise of Groupon is to combine social networking with the growing need for consumers to save money.
    
    According to Wikipedia, Groupon first targeted the Chicago market, followed by Boston, New York City and Toronto. As of October 2010, Groupon was serving over 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America; and Groupon had amassed 35 million registered users by Oct., 2010.
    
    In April 2010, Groupon was valued at $1.35 billion. According to a report in Forbes Magazine, Groupon was "on pace to make $1 billion in sales faster than any other business, ever."

• Groupon Founders Launch Online Pawn Shop

  • Two of the men responsible for the largest online coupon site, Groupon, are entering the pawn shop business.
    
    Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, who are no longer at Groupon and currently run the investment firm Lightbank, have launched Pawngo, an online pawnbroker.
    
    Pawngos objective is to provide customers with a practical and affordable option to credit card loans and other alternative loan options. Customers can put up collateral such as gold, jewelry and other items to secure a short-term loan. Pawngo visitors may also sell their items online.
    
    Pawngo provides loans based on an item's current market value for up to six months at rates of between 3 and 6 percent. Typical brick-and-mortar pawn shops charge about 20 percent interest per month.
    
    Customers may obtain a loan through Pawngo from $250 to $100,000.
    
    Pawngo.com visitors enter a description of their items, submit a digital photo and complete the contact information. No credit card information or Social Security number is required. Pawngo send a preliminary loan offer or buy estimate within a few hours. If the customer accepts the offer, Pawngo users can print an overnight, pre-paid FedEx shipping label to send the item directly to Pawngo's evaluation lab. Once the item has been received, a representative contacts the customer with an item evaluation and an offer. If accepted, the item is stored in Pawngo's vault, and the customer's money is transmitted to their bank account.

• Labor Board Continues Its Defense of Facebook-Related Terminations

  • The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is stepping up its efforts to protect employees terminated due to issues related to postings on their Facebook page.
    
    The NLRB has filed two lawsuits recently against employers for social media-related firings.
    
    In one case, a non-profit organization called Hispanics United of Buffalo, is accused by the NLRB of unlawfully firing five workers following Facebook posts by the employees where they were critical of their work load and staffing-related situations.
    
    According to the NLRB, a Hispanics United employee who posted a co-workers comments that the organization did not adequately help clients.
    
    The posting occurred just prior to a management meeting where the agenda topic was regarding work conditions. Several other employees posted comments to the posting, where they defended their performance and were critical of their work environment.
    
    Hispanics United promptly terminated the five employees who posted the comments. Hispanics United said the comments were a form of harassment against the employee who was mentioned in the initial posting.
    
    The Hispanics United lawyers said the terminated workers were let go over the harassment of a co-worker, and the Facebook postings were not a factor.
    
    In another case, the NLRB filed a complaint against Chicago car dealer for alleged NLRB violations.
    
    The dealership, Karl Knauz Motors, Inc., is accused of terminating an employee for Facebook postings.
    
    The complaint states that in June 2010 an employee, Patty Becker, made Facebook comments about a sales function put on by the car dealer. Becker was then fired soon after the comments.
    
    Social media-related firings and subsequent NLRB lawsuits are still a new phenomenon, so it's unclear how courts may rule. It is safe to say, however, that human resources managers will have their hands full over the next couple years adjusting their personnel manuals to properly reflect any new laws or court rulings.

• SEO Tactics to Avoid

  • There have been a lot of articles and research on search engine optimization strategies that will help to improve your website's search rankings. But not enough has been published regarding SEO tactics that website publishers may want to avoid.
    
    Copying your competition: There are tool available that help to determine which keywords and terms are being utilized by your competition.
    Many SEO managers will review their competition's keywords as a matter of practice. But you should be careful not to automatically duplicate these keywords. After all, some of them may not be working well for the competitors, so you don't want to allocate your valuable resources toward bad keywords. Instead, monitor the competition's keywords over time. If there are terms used on a consistent basis, you can bet those are working well. The ones that come and go quickly are not performing, so they most likely won't perform well for your rankings, either.
    
    Avoid mass reciprocal linking schemes: The "I'll scratch your back; you scratch mine" concept is not a bad strategy. Linking partners that have a business connection is a good way to enhance your search rankings and to enhance your site traffic. But you need to avoid the spam solicitations to do reciprocal linking. If you do not know the other entity, you should not be sharing links. Besides, search engine can usually spot unrelated links, so this practice will not help your rankings.
    
    Spread the page links around properly: When linking your site to others, do not automatically link to your homepage. Make sure the links are directly to the appropriate page within your site that relates to the other blog, article or website.
    
    Do not create useless website pages: It is not a good idea to add new pages that either have the same information as other pages within your site, useless information or maybe very little information at all. In fact, this strategy will probably backfire and search engines may penalize your site with lower rankings. Content is the key. Make sure your pages are loaded with rich, timely, updated, original content that pertains to the primary purposes of your website.
    
    Avoid excessive websites: it is difficult enough developing an effective SEO program for one website, let alone multiple sites. Many publishers create various websites to promote a variety of products and services. But you may be better off focusing on fewer websites -- especially if the information is pretty much related. For example, if your core business is insurance sales, it will be easier to have one site with various pages for auto insurance, home, life, heatlh, etc. -- as opposed to multiple sites for each line of insurance.
    
    Good luck -- and happy selling!

• Excellent Organic SEO Pointers

  • Every Internet marketer is looking for those little gems that can help enhance their search ranking in the hopes of enhancing their website traffic.
    
    Long gone are the days when it took a programming genius to develop a functional website. Now, there are numerous tools available for any business to build a professional-looking site. This has led to a massive spike in the sheer quantity of websites that every business must compete against.
    
    The ideas below are just a few tips that may help you gain an advantage over your competitors when it comes to search engine optimization that may help you to improve your results:
    
    • Be patient -- especially if your site has beeen around for a number of years. If the site was built several years ago and you have never done much SEO work on it, you will have to dedicate some resources and time toward optimizing the site. Do not give up too soon. There will be a lot of trial-and-error involved.
    
    • Always remember who you are targeting. Develop your SEO strategy as if you are the prospective customer. What are your hot buttons? What keywords would attract you to a particular website? What products and services would lure you to a site? It is very important that your visitors are interested in your offers. Make them as appealing as possible.
    
    • Spend as much time as needed determining your keywords. Use the various tools that are at your disposal, such as Google AdWords, etc. Write out a lengthy list before you determine your choices. Revise the keywords frequently, based on performance and continued research.
    
    • Your website design will play a role in your search engine rankings. Make sure the layout, graphics, images, etc. are appealing.
    
    • Make sure your website includes features such as articles/blogs, an index and a comments section. These will help to enhance your search ranking.
    
    • You need to constantly add new, fresh content to your site. Even if you are not a skilled writer, make sure your site is filled with pages of pertinent content that will be interesting to your site visitors and helpful for your search engine rankings.
    
    These are just a handful of ideas that may help you to improve your SEO. We strongly encourage all website publishers to seek out this type of information on an ongoing basis. Internet marketing strategies are always evolving. You need to stay on top of the trends and the new techniques to keep your website relevent.

• Defining Web Search Terms

  • There are numerous Internet search-related terms that have become part of normal conversation and language. Most everyone is familiar with terms such as "keywords," "pay-per-click," "search engine optimization," "Google" and so on.  But there are numerous other terms that define key components of search engine marketing that may be more vague.
    
    We thought it would be interesting to clarify several of the more interesting, yet obscure, search engine-related terms:
    
    Search query:
    
    A search query differs from keywords, yet they are often thought to be the same terms. A search query is the word or series of words entered into a search engine. They are usually a larger set of keywords which online marketers may examine to determine more effective targeted keywords. For example, if one notices that a search query consistently displays the same results, then that may be a good way to develop a new ad group for your search engine AdWords campaign.
    
    Boolean connectives/Boolean operators:
    
    Boolean operators are used to connect terms and specify terms in search queries. "AND," "OR," and "NOT" are the more common Boolean connectives. For example, a search for Japanese restaurants in Los Angeles may be enterred as "Los Angeles AND Japanese restaurants." Or, if someone wants to find a romantic restaurant in Los Angeles, but does not like Japanese food, they may enter "Los Angeles AND restaurants NOT Japanese."
    
    Boolean operators are based on Boolean Logic. Its name is derived from 19th century mathematician George Boole. His theory breaks down everything into either true or false values. Internet searches use a similar logic, where queries are assigned with a value of "zero" or "one."
    
    Web-bot (aka, web robot):
    
    Any Internet program that pulls information from websites. Search engine web-bots (or search-bots) collect data from websites that correspond to the search query. 
    
    (The "Web-Bot Project" is an Internet program that can supposedly predict future events by tracking the history of keywords. Created in 1997 by Clif High and George Ure, the Web-Bot Project" was initally invented to predict stocks. The algorithms used for the Web-Bot Project have yet to be revealed.)
    
    Email harvester:
    
    This is a common spam tactic, whereby web-bots are used to collect email addresses from web pages or newsgroups. These are then used by spammers who then spam the harvested email addresses.
    
    Cloaking:
    
    Cloaking is the hiding of page content. This is usually done to prevent web page thieves from stealing optimized pages.
    
    False drop:
    
    A web page obtained from a search engine that is not relevant to the search query. This usually occurs because the web page may include the search terms, but is not related to the context of the search; or because the search is an attempt to spam; or because there is a bug in the search engine program.
    
    Image map:
    
    This is a set of hyperlinks connected with an image. The image map needs to be included within a web page in order to accurately index the other pages within the site.
    
    Log file:
    
    A log file is where the details of all file accesses are stored. Log files contain a ton of information about a web site's visitors, including: referring sites and queries used to find the site.

• SVO

  • What is "social video optimization" (SVO) and how can you use SVO to enhance your websites' performance?
    
    Social video marketing has been defined by AdAge magazine as “the use of video as the central organizing element for social interaction and storytelling online."
    
    Social Video Optimization has grown rapdily to become an important tool in Internet search marketing. Most of the major search engines include social media in their algorithm for organic searches. So, it makes sense that social videos can be utilized to effectively enhance one's search performance, as well, especially for those with e-commerce sites.
    
    How can social media videos be used to enhance the e-commerce site?
    
    1) Compelling videos will capture the attention of consumers, who will spread the word to their friends and associates.
    
    2) Adding the videos to your social network pages are an excellent way to spread the message to your more loyal customers.
    
    3) Many consumers learn better through visual communication than by reading text. Video provides an excellent alternative to articles, FAQ sections, product information, sales, contest, etc.
    
    4) The video is a great way to enhance your brand. Strategically place your website address/logo in the corner of the video, scroll the website address across the bottom of the screen and mention your website name numerous times throughout the video. Even if the consumer does not purchase the products you are marketing right away, they often return to the site thanks in large part to the brand awareness you have created.
    
    5) Videos are an excellent way to respond to common customer comments, questions and suggestions. And, when posted on your social media sites, it will likely drive more traffic to your website.

• Improve Your Cost Per Action (CPA)

  • How's your CPA?
    
    As an Internet marketer, your objective is to achieve the lowest possible cost per action for your ad campaigns. The lower your CPA, the higher your return on investment.
    
    The CPA equals the cost of an ad campaign, divided by the number of lead conversions. The primary components in the CPA equation include advertising expenses (pay per click, email lists, etc.), and the revenue generated through conversions. You need to know this formula in order to determine the success rate of your campaigns.
    
    If your CPA is not adequate, you may want to consider the following suggestions:
    
    * Expand or modify your keywords:
    
    Fine-tune the keywords by eliminating those that are not performing well. Create more groups and track the results from each group. Tweak the text in your search ads. Search engine keyword management is an ongoing process that should be monitored on a daily basis.
    
    * Revise your offers:
    
    Do you offer a free report for every order? Is your copy enticing enough for consumers? You may want to shake things up -- test different types of offers ... test new copy. See if the changes will result in a higher quantity and quality leads.
    
    * Weigh quantity versus quality:
    
    One offer may generate a ton of leads, but only a small percentage of conversions. If you are getting paid by conversions, this means you are wasting too many leads. In this case, maybe you need to try a new email list or target market. It may be OK to generate fewer leads, if the conversion rate is strong.
    
    * Learn from your successful ads:
    
    Closely analyze the most successful CPA ads. What is it about those ads that helps to generate a low CPA/high ROI? Is it the text? Is the text brief? Is it very descriptive? What keywords are you using? What landing pages are used? What offers are on those landing pages? What products are being marketed? Use this information wisely when creating other campaigns.
    
    * Dump the bad/keep the good:
    
    Do not hang on to high CPA campaigns for too long. If it is not working, either make changes or dump the campaign. You can use the money to help fund new advertisements; or you can re-allocate the money toward more successful campaigns.

• Will Your Affiliate Marketing Programs Make You Rich?

  • You launched an Internet affiliate marketing business, expecting -- or at least hoping -- to earn a healthy six-figure income ... just like the claims in the testimonials.  There is no doubt there are many affiliate marketing publishers generating this kind of revenue. But there are also many publishers struggling to jump-start their revenue stream.
    
    What separates the "haves" from the "have-nots" in the world of affiliate marketing?
    
    The "haves" are successful because they:
    
    * Generate traffic to their websites. After all, you can't conduct any Internet marketing unless you first lure prospects to your site. This may mean conducting PPC campaigns, email marketing, SEO, etc. You will have to allocate some resources to generate website traffic. There is really no way to avoid it.
    * Find quality affiliate marketing programs (i.e., T3LEADS!). The top companies typically offer healthy commission potential, user-friendly tracking systems, website templates and superior customer support. Oh -- and most of the top programs are free to join.
    * Seek products that interest you. If the products or services are not appealing to the publisher, then it may be challenging to market for them.
    * Include content on the websites that relate to the affiliate programs. If your blog or web articles are all about sports, but the affiliate programs are financial service-related, then your visitors may not be interested in those types of products -- even if you are generating a ton of website traffic.
    * Experiment..test...and keep testing. Play with your AdWords. Track which ones generate the best traffic and the most leads. Adjust your bids and your budget. Set up a spreadsheet and carefully monitor the return on investment for all your marketing efforts.
    * Connect with other successful marketers. Glean ideas from others who have already tried, failed and eventually succeeded. Read their blogs, their articles and their books. Attend seminars.
    
    There are many highly successful publishers who wandered aimlessly through the Internet marketing world for months or years before hitting on the right formula for their business. Do not give up after a few attempts. Learn from your mistakes. Eventually your hard work will pay off handsomely.

• The Keys to Keywords

  • So -- you have a website and you want to start using it to generate e-commerce business or affiliate marketing leads and sales. You have done your research and you have a marketing plan. You want to use SEO tactics and PPC advertising.
    
    Now the big question: how do you determine the best keywords that will drive the most traffic and potential business through your site.
    
    Check out the following pointers to help in your keyword selection process:
    
    1) Sign up with Google Adwords. If you are trying to conduct a PPC campaign without Google Adwords, you are omitting the most obvious tool in your arsenal. Adwords provides a very user-friendly menu of resources, including keyword suggestions, possible traffic totals, and much more.
    
    2)  While in Adwords, go to Keyword Variations (under "Reporting and Tools") and then Site-Related Keywords. Enter a competitor's website URL that is potentially targeting the same demographics as your website. Then click on "Include other pages on my site linked from this URL" and then "Get Keywords." A list of keywords from the competitors' site will be displayed. This is a good way to gauge which keywords to possibly use for your site. Of course, you will not know how each keyword is performing, but it is a good place to start.
    
    3) Check out Word Tracker, which is a user-friendly keyword research tool. The basic service is free, but you can upgrade to access additional features. Word Tracker will generate a list of related keywords to your site.
    
    4) Another useful tool is Keyword Spy. The free service will help you to find pertinent keywords for your website and for articles, as well. Keyword Spy also provides statistics about PPC competitors.
    
    5) WordStream is a database of over 1 billion highly rated keywords. You can review the list, as well as the research tools, to determine which words and terms will be the most useful.
    
    Hopefully these suggestions help you get started on the road to Internet marketing riches.

• Determining the Value of PPC Advertising

  • Search engine marketers often wrestle with ways to determine the actual value of their marketing efforts. WordStream, a search marketing firm that helps Internet marketers maximize their PPC and SEO performance, has developed a white paper called, "Measuring the Long Term value of PPC." The paper is designed to help uncover the secrets behind determining pay-per-click return on investment.
    
    According to WordStream, "The challenge is that while ad spend decisions are often made on a month-by-month basis, revenue from PPC ad campaigns often don’t come until weeks, months or sometimes years later." This white paper reviews the reasons why PPC return on investment figures are so difficult to gauge and offers tips to help enhance the long-term value of PPC campaigns.
    
    The white paper includes advice, such as:
    
    * Track and test landing pages: make sure there is a clear call to action; be able to determine the keywords that drove traffic to that page; etc.
    * Set "negative keywords" to assure that Google and other search engines do not display your ad in inappropriate searches.
    * Sort your keywords in concise, relevent groups.
    
    The white paper concludes: "Today’s customer builds relationships with brands over time and across a number of different channels, experiences and touchpoints. The complexity of the modern customer lifecycle can obscure the true value of these channels and marketing campaigns, inflating some campaigns and undercounting the contributions of others. As customer behavior and channels have evolved, a handful of tools have emerged to measure and improve the long-term return on investment of marketing campaigns. By leveraging these tools and following best practices for keywords and landing pages, marketers can invest their budgets more strategically and get more for their investment over the long-term."
    
    For more information, check out the complete report:
    http://www.wordstream.com/download/docs/WordStream_Performable_Longterm_ROI_PPC.pdf

• How Press Releases Can Enhance Your SEO

  • Marketing and PR experts have been nagging business owners for years about the virtues of a consistent public relations campaign. PR can be a form of free (or very inexpensive) advertising. But a lot of buisnesses shy away from it because it is difficult to gauge the return on investment from PR campaigns.
    
    Nowadays PR can also be used to effectively enhance a website's search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and to grow the site's inbound links -- especially when distributing press releases through one of the online wire services. Most of the major PR services can help you connect with hundreds of backlinks with the distribution of each news release.
    
    Check out some additional ways to enhance your PR/SEO efforts:
    
    * Join the world of Twitter. Most of the top online marketers will post a link to their press release from their Twitter account. This will help to attract more Twitter followers and more hits to your website.
    * Make use of your press release headline. Incorporate keywords into the headline, but do not make the headline too wordy.
    * Include images and/or video links within your press releases. This will enhance your search results. Remember to name each image or video with brief, descriptive text that includes your keywords.
    
    Some online press releases distribution services include:
    * PRWeb
    * PR
    * BusinessWire
    * PRNewswire
    * MarketWire
    * NewsWireToday

• Writing Effective PPC Ad Copy

  • Many Internet advertisers and publishers utilize pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic to their websites. But, placing your bids and setting your PPC budget is not enough to drive traffic to your site. The ad copy must effectively convey your message, as well.
    
    You do not have to be a Nobel Prize-winning author to write effective PPC ad copy. You simply need to follow soem basic rules, such as:
    
    * Before you write your ad copy, first figure out which keywords you want to include in the text. Make sure you include the keywords in your headline and ad copy.
    
    * Write multiple ads for each website and track the performance of each ad. You may be surprised which ads work the best.
    
    * Try asking questions. A question is often a good way to get the prospect involved. Test questions such as: Is your website getting enough traffic? or ... Want to know the secret for closing more sales?
    
    * Solve the consumers' problem with your ad text. How do you do that? Here are some examples: Can find the right Mother's Day gift? We have the perfect gift ideas for your mom.
    
    * Remember to also consider how the consumer will benefit from visiting your websites. Will your products and services help them to save money, make money, pay off urgent expenses, raise brilliant children, etc.? COnsumers do not care so much about the product or service as much as they care about how they will benefit their life.
    
    Try these PPC ad copy ideas. You will likely see an improvement in your results. As you become more adept at your PPC campaigns you will no doubt come up with other copy writing ideas that work well.