Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 4

All Time Greats

Best of 2008 - SEO Tools, Part 1

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: SEO Tools on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: SEO tools, backlink checking, search engine rank, website grade, link building, Searchlight, Brian R. Brown, Netconcepts, Link Counter, Search Engine Land, Mona Elesseily, Page Zero Media, SpyFu, Search Marketing Blog Online, Jon Clark, TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, Website Grader, HubSpot, Rank Checker, KeywordEnvy, Trevor Claiborne, SEO People, link ninja, Paul Teitelman, Traffic Marks, Small Business Search Marketing, Matt McGee, SheerSEO, SearchNewz, Navneet Kaushal, Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty del.icio.us tags: SEO tools, backlink checking, search engine rank, website grade, link building, Searchlight, Brian R. Brown, Netconcepts, Link Counter, Search Engine Land, Mona Elesseily, Page Zero Media, SpyFu, Search Marketing Blog Online, Jon Clark, TechCrunch, Erick Schonf

Email Campaign, Newsletter and Banner Ad Click-Through Rates (CTR)

When planning online advertising and email promotion budgets, it's critical to calculate the likely ROI upfront whenever possible, as well as to establish campaign benchmarks. The first step is understanding the average and likely range of CTRs for various programs. The growth in online advertising, the proliferation of enewsletters, the emergence of new forms of information delivery such as RSS and the emergence of social media sites have all affected CTR, so planning based on current data is crucial. It can be challenging to find current statistics, but based on several studies, these are typical CTR ranges for email newsletter ads, email campaigns (blasts or internally-produced enewsletters), and banner ads. Email newsletter advertisements Open rates range from 28-40%, with an average of about 33%—meaning that roughly one-third of the subscriber base is likely to see your ad. The Advertising Is Good For You blog tracks these statistics from DoubleClick . The average CT

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 6

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: online video SEO reputation management social bookmarking social media marketing SEO and reputation management Search Engine Journal Loren Baker Google Video ClipShare PHPmotion 30 largest social bookmarking sites Anything Goes Blog Stuntdubl social media can increase revenue Social Media Today Jacob Morgan increase blog traffic How To Make My Blog Marko Saric what not to do in social media Interactive Insights Group Robin Broitman social media gaffes Target Motrin Starbucks Whole Foods FedEx del.icio.us tags: online video SEO reputation management social bookmarking social media marketing SEO and reputation management Search Engine Journal Loren Baker Google Video ClipShare PHPmotion 30 largest social bookmarking sites Anything Goes Blog Stuntdubl social media can increase revenue Social Media Today Jacob Morgan increa

Salesforce.com's "No Software" Mantra: More Effective Than They Know

From its beginnings, Salesforce.com has emphasized its online delivery model with its "No Software" positioning, even snagging 1-800-NO SOFTWARE as its toll-free line. While the application service provider (ASP) or software-as-a-service (SaaS) model in general has never lived up to its initial hype, among consumers or business users, Salesforce.com has enjoyed impressive success with it. While the company's success with sales and marketing users is hardly news at this point, I was surprised in doing some research recently at how successful the No Software campaign has been among another group: enterprise software developers. Salesforce.com has apparently succeeded at making "software" a nasty word for many of these firms, almost like a racial slur or a misogynistic anachronism not to be uttered in polite company. For example, Synopsys , a developer of electronic design automation software, doesn't produce software at all according to either its home page

Google and the Parable of the Turkey

In The Black Swan , Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about the life of the turkey: for 100 days, the turkey is sheltered, fed and cared for by the farmer. The turkey grows to trust the farmer completely, even perhaps developing a fondness for the farmer (and of course the feed). Then, on the 101st day (with Thanksgiving quickly approaching), the relationship between the turkey and the farmer changes abruptly and permanently. The rationale behind the farmer's apparent benevolence become clear in a final flash before the turkey takes the necessary step preceding de-feathering, vacuum-packing, freezing and shipping off to the market. Taleb's lesson for us from this: don't be a turkey. More succinctly, don't assume that the future will resemble the past, or, in the words of mutual fund prospectuses , "past performance is no guarantee of future results." Also, remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Of course, that doesn't take into account the pe

Throwback Thursday: Digital Marketing Style

Comment with some of your old, but favorite marketing styles and strategies! We would love to see how things have changed for us all in the marketing industry over time!

The ROI of Website Redesigns per Forrester

Forrester Research makes a collection of its past webcasts on various online marketing topics freely available (registration required). I recently checked out one of their presentations from about a year ago titled "The ROI of Web Site Redesigns Made Simple" by Harley Manning and Jeffrey North . Like any presentation from one of the big analyst firms, the research focuses on very large companies, and is vertically unfocused (in this webcast, they divided websites into three groups: e-commerce, manufacturing [including B2B] and financial services), but still provides some nuggets of value for smaller organizations. Forrester's key findings from their website redesign research: By Forrester's standards, 97% of business websites fail to earn a passing grade for usability. Among the biggest sins—79% fail at basic legibility (adequate font size and contrast with background). They cite the New York Times website as the gold standard for legibility (not logic, truth

SEO Link Spam - What Is It and Who's to Blame?

Over the years, unscrupulous black hat SEO scammers have used a variety of tricks—keyword stuffing, link farms, white text and others—to try to manipulate search results, and the algorithms used by Google, Yahoo and the other search engines have evolved to identify and squelch the effectiveness of such nefarious tactics. A more vexing issue for the search engines is dealing with link spam, not only because it is difficult to detect and address algorithmically, but because there isn't even a clear definition. As a website owner, the term represents emails like this: Dear webmaster, As a part of ongoing campaign to increase the Link Popularity of My website I am looking for some good potential sites like yours. I review your site and find that, in SEO perspective your site is Perfect. Also, this would be a great resource for my visitors too. I would request you to consider listing my site. Title:- My Spammy Website URL:- http://www.indiaspamforyou.com Description:- mi

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