Category: Industry Insights

Every month, our Read This! series brings you the best in practical web marketing and online presence-building pieces from across the net. Read on for this month’s selection:

The Direct Path to Finding Prospects and Customers Online

Direct marketing is focused on the customer, speaking directly to them in order to grow the brand. Find out why this discipline accounts for over half of all ad spend and how to communicate with your prospects to turn them into loyal fans.

5 Tips For More Impact From Social Media Participation

Of course, getting likes and followers is just half the battle: for maximum exposure and customer interaction, you have to encourage audience participation whenever possible. Check out these handy tips to get tongues wagging and topics trending for your business.

9 Hot Skills That Are Trending on LinkedIn

Social media and the analytics thereof are a booming topic right now, and everyone’s on the lookout for qualified folks. Check out these phrases that are attracting interest among LinkedIn users in 2012.

Study Shows Return Policy Can Make or Break the Sale

If you’re in the business of distributing inventory online, give this one a look. Small factors such as the structure of your return policy or need to log in before making a transaction can have huge impacts on your bottom line.

How Many Fans Do Your Facebook Posts Reach?

With the advent of promoted posts, many Facebook users are becoming aware that their posts aren’t reaching the maximum amount of fans possible. Use this simple formula to figure out how many of your fans are actually seeing your content and how effective your pages are.

1. Mapping the Mobile Future, Apple To Drop Google Maps for In-House Creation — Marketing Pilgrim

A permanent split between Apple and Google is on the horizon. In a key test of the company’s post-Jobs era leadership, Apple is planning to do away with Google Maps on their devices to make way for an in-house project. They’ve vowed to stick with the familiar “cleaner, faster, and more reliable” design strategy, but there are bound to be some surprises — check out this article for all the information that’s available right now.

2. How to Get Your Site Indexed Before it is Even Launched — Search Engine Journal

There many excellent reasons to get your site indexed before it goes live, but it takes a skillset to make sure you’ve built traffic, buzz and email marketing lists before launch. Don’t take a hit in the search engine rankings because your site is brand-new: follow the advice in this post to hit the ground running.

3. Time is on Your Side — Bitly

A social network has complex, unpredictable behavior patterns by its very nature, but the folks at Bitly are starting to uncover some interesting trends when it comes to viral events. They set out to determine the best time to publish content that is intended for viral distribution and have come to some fascinating conclusions, so read on before you start your next campaign.

4. Are You Setting Up WordPress For SEO Success? — SEOMoz

Optimizing WordPress pages can be a frustrating chore. Plugin and theme crashes can set anyone back, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your effort. This blog post delves deep into WordPress to give you some tips on how to optimize your site effectively.

5. 8 Common Twitter Questions from Small Business Owners — Small Business SEM

Any small business can benefit from Twitter, even if you don’t think your customers are on social networks. Connecting with bloggers, journalists and other influencers can help raise your exposure and search rankings. Here are answers to eight common questions that small business owners have about Twitter.

How to Survive Google’s Unnatural Links Warnings & Avoid Over-optimisation – SEOMOZ

With the recent updates made by Google, over-optimization of your site could come back to haunt you. Google does not want to reward sites with “webspam” any longer. This article will let you know how to navigate the changes Google has implemented.

Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo – SEOMOZ

Last week, Google released the “Penguin” update to stop over-optimization of websites.  This update has impacted sites in wildly varying ways so far, and this is only the beginning. Here, you can read about the different aspects of the update and get some basic do’s and don’ts for your site.

Google Webmaster Tools Expands Query Data to 90 Days – Search Engine Land

Some good news has come from Google Webmaster Tools this week with the expansion of historical search queries to 90 days and the number of queries reports to 2,000 per day of the selected date range. This article helps you understand these changes and how they’ll make you more knowledgeable about your site.

Using Twitter to Promote Your Brand – Pronet Advertising

Here are a few tips on how to get as much as you can out of Twitter. This pithy social media platform is a key aspect of online marketing that needs to be utilized if you are trying to promote your brand and connect with customers, and this is an excellent starting point if you’re looking to set up an account for your business.

Understanding Google Places & Local Search – Developing Knowledge about Local Search – Blumenthals Blog

The maintenance of your Google Places pages can be hair-rendingly frustrating at times, but intuiting the cause and effect of the system is a big first step. This article explains what the next step would be if your account has been suspended. Google has made some important changes to Places policy which will hopefully make things easier for everyone.

As always, we’re proud to feature best-of-the-web stories and practical advice for competing online in our monthly Read This! feature. Check out May’s offerings after the jump!

• 6 Ways to Boost Your Rankings Using Google Authorship

Are you using Google Authorship to get your face in the SERPs and increase your authority? If not, you should look into utilizing this handy feature, which links your G+ account with blog posts you’ve authored. Check out this Search Engine Watch post on six ways to capitalize on your newfound notoriety.

• Mobile Navigation Design & Tutorial

If you’re in the process of trying to get your site mobile-friendly, you know that intuitive navigation in such a compressed space is one of the most challenging pieces of the puzzle. Courtesy of Web Designer Wall, here’s some top-notch practical advice on how make all your content available to surfers, with examples from real mobile sites.

• The Layout of Your Discount Page Will Affect Your Sales

Your site’s layout plays a big part in consumer reaction, and the power of the discount is a mighty one when wisely deployed. Learn about the interplay of the two in this useful tutorial from Practical SEO.

• Social Shares: The New Link Building

The social Web is ever-growing, and crafting widely-shared content can promote your brand and increase your authority by leaps and bounds. Ultimately, the best way is the old-fashioned one — invest energy into meeting new people, interacting with your network and making things that are just plain good — and this article offers some web-savvy ways to get the most out of your efforts.

• Why Website Owners Should Be Using Pinterest

New visually-based sharing engine Pinterest is hot, hot, hot right now. In just a handful of months it’s exploded with both an increased userbase and brand-new features, and its potential for growing your brand is sky-high. Michael Gray takes us through some potential applications, including how you can use Pinterest to walk a mile in your customers’ shoes.

12 Most Valuable Personality Traits of Top SEO Consultants — 12 Most

This article is an oldie, but a goodie on the 12 best qualifications for a top SEO consultant. Sure you are driven, intelligent and articulate, but if you do not feel that you combine your technical, artistic, and analytical sides, perhaps it is time for a refresher course.

Google Glasses: Don’t Plan on Buying Them for Christmas – Washington Post

Google-Vision: Like Wonka Vision, but with more SIRI and less mini Mike TeeVee.  Google’s Project Glass has revealed its Google Glasses this week as co-founder Sergey Brin donned these enhanced spectacles while out to dinner. Don’t get too excited though. These glasses will not be available to consumers for months or even years. To get an idea what these snazzy shades are capable of, check out this photo gallery.

Google Sending Warnings About “Artificial” or “Unnatural” Links — Search Engine Land 

If you’ve received a warning about “artificial” or “unnatural” links pointing at your site, you’d probably like to know that Google has recently taken a new stance on link networks. While previously, these link networks were “silently distrusted,” now Google has decided to report such potentially black hat link issues.

Show Keyword Position Using Filters and Advanced Segments  – SEOMoz

Here at Search Influence, it is time to send out reports again, so what could be more pertinent to our reporting endeavors than a strategy to provide useful, easily-understood information to clients. Through this easy-to-follow 2-Step process, you can provide your clients with a graph showing the position of your searched keywords as a percentage of total visits. This new reporting process could help you explain exactly what it is that you do.

Google AdWords Adds ZIP Code Targeting, Location Insertion; Updates Location Targeting – Search Engine Watch

You’ve probably noticed search results are adapting more and more to location targeting, but Google has just announced new ZIP Code targeting in AdWords as well.  This will allow advertisers to hone in on up to 100 specific regions. Another new feature includes Dynamic Location Insertion. It’s DKI for cities!

As always, our Read This! feature profiles stories and how-to’s you can’t afford to miss for your business, offering direct and practical advice for competing online. Check out this month’s offerings after the jump!

The Twitter Guide for Small Business

With the advent of its small business ad products, Twitter has published an official 22-page ebook showing you how to “engage with your customers and put Twitter to work for your business.” Look for the PDF link below the video!

Measuring Your Company’s Online Success

While we’ve given you a plethora of tips to increase your online visibility and interaction with your customers, finding hard data as to whether your efforts are working is a whole ‘nother story. Check out this handy guide to the metrics of web success and see if your company is measuring up.

Your Analytics Tool May Be Lying to You

Now that you’re familiar with the basics of web metrics, let’s take a slightly more contextualized look. While the analytics data can give a good indication of where you are succeeding or failing, it’s important to look at it within the scope of other numbers in your industry.

The 375 Million Active Searchers You`re Probably Ignoring

iTunes is the go-to resource for finding podcasts, videos and other media, and if you’re not making your presence know there you could be missing out on a huge chunk of the action.

Practical Tips to Make Your Blog More Useful & Interactive

TopRank’s Lee Odden shares a wide array of effective blogging tidbits from the #smchat and #nptalk social media chats.

Over Optimizing Your Website, What to Look Out For

While making your site search engine-friendly is an important part of maintaining an online presence, “keyword stuffing” or other forms of over-optimizing can be the death knell for your rankings. Read up on the best ways to keep up a strong site while avoiding being penalized.