CouponDeals.tv

Contests

Deals

eBuys

eBuyZilla

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

 

Many strategies for managing Pay-per-click or PPC accounts translate across all sizes of PPC accounts. Keeping your ad text fresh, not over using broad match and other tips can be easily implemented across accounts of any size. But any PPC manager who has managed an account that spends a couple hundred thousand dollars a month can tell you it's quite different than managing an account that spends a few thousand a month.

When managing a smaller PPC campaign, you may have to stay away from certain strategies because your budget is limited. With larger clients, due to the increased budget, you have the opportunity to employ many strategies in order to drive leads. The client may not care how they get the leads, as long as they're getting them at an acceptable cost per acquisition or a positive ROI on the campaign. Whether it's branded keywords, competitor brand names, it doesn't matter, as long as you're driving leads.

 

View full post on Search Engine Journal

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

 
One of the biggest challenges in analyzing conversions to your website is figuring out which channels contributed to a goal conversion. A new change to Google Analytics now allows you to see when multiple channels contribute to a goal.
 

Monday, August 29, 2011

 
Rand Fishkin is the CEO of SEOmoz, an SEO software company. He has tried, and failed, to raise venture capital twice. Initially, Fishkin didn't want to raise money. SEOmox is profitable, and it's projecting $11.5 million in revenue this year.
 
View full post on SEO – Google News

Sunday, August 28, 2011

 
Google has added voice search to Google Maps for Chrome browser users, allowing users to ask for directions verbally and more find hard-to-spell locations. The addition is part of the ongoing integration of voice-recognition technology.
 

Saturday, August 27, 2011

 

Despite spending $179 million acquiring Slide a year ago, Google has decided to shut down the social apps startup, All Things Digital reported.

Slide founder Max Levchin, who also started PayPal, will be leaving Google. 

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Friday, August 26, 2011

 

Within the next year or so, a flood of HTML5-based Web apps will be coming to mobile devices. It will likely start with games and dedicated applications like e-readers and move to more general use apps like news sites. Companies like Facebook and Amazon will be at the tip of the spear. The next wave will be sophisticated developers that see the power of HTML5 as an alternative to the native application model.

It is not a foregone conclusion, but the rise of Web app stores is a likely future. Facebook's so-called "Project Spartan" may be driving the shift but other outlets such as news companies may be looking for a way to skirt the strict rules of the Apple App Store or the chaos of the Android Market and create their own centralized hubs for magazine-like Web apps as digital newsstands. Looking ahead, will Web app stores become the dominant model? That is the question for this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Thursday, August 25, 2011

 
Bing Webmaster Tools now has fully integrated in Yahoo's traffic numbers as well. So if you have seen a spike in your Bing Webmaster Tools traffic charts, this is the reason why. You should see your impressions and clicks data spike up, while the click through rate numbers may fluctuate
 
 

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

 
If you've worked as an SEO for any length of time, more likely than not, there's been at least one time when you've received an email or phone call informing you that a new product, site section, or feature was released recently.
 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

 

There was a time before the "Great Recession" when a cluster of companies were seemingly always bidding against one another to acquire the hot startup of the month. The core of that group consisted of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, AOL and News Corp. But while AOL and Yahoo still buy companies — AOL bought HuffingtonPost and Yahoo is in the running for Hulu — they're no longer as aggressive as they once were.

For its part News Corp unloaded MySpace earlier this year (a name now synonymous with decline or failure) and is now hobbled by scandal. But never fear Facebook may be preparing to fill the vacuum and take its rightful place in the new startup acquisitions club beside Google, Microsoft and Apple.

 

View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Monday, August 22, 2011

 

Just slapping your logo on your sites and printed matter is not enough. If you want to build the kind of cohesive brand identity that sticks with customers and gives the impression of polished professionalism, you'll go beyond the logo and look for all the ways you can add consistency to your visual branding. It might seem like a lot of little inconsequential details, but added together they add up to the kind of branding that inspires confidence in customers.

1. Use a consistent color palette. These should be colors that complement the colors used in your logo used in a way that conforms with the principles of good design. Even if your logo contains neon green, don't use neon colors for your fonts! Although most of us can match well enough to dress ourselves, it's worth the money to consult with a professional designer who can design a color scheme that will work well with websites and printed material and advise you on how to use it.

If a professional is simply out of the budget, there are many websites that can help you design a palette (search for "color palettes" or "color combinations"), but be sure to use good sense with what colors you pick for which purpose.

2. Stick with a handful of Fonts. It might seem fun to choose a different font for each page or project, but it can come across as amateurish. Choose fonts that are easy to read and work well for a variety of purposes. You can be a bit more creative with fonts used for headlines but again, pick one or two and use it consistently across all of your materials.

3. Use custom design elements. All of those little buttons and icons should coordinate with each other and not be randomly picked. One of the best ways to do this is to have them custom made for your sites by a graphic designer. This way they can be styled to complement your logo, color scheme and the general impression you are going for.

It it's not possible to get custom design elements, then at least take care and time in picking a set of graphics that work with your site and use them consistently.

4. Use a theme when choosing art/illustrations. Some sites use only cartoons to illustrate their pages, others use black and white photography or line art or pictures of dogs. You'll want to choose art that fits the impression you wish to give of your site (whimsical, serious, artistic, etc) and use it consistently.

Having half of the pages on your site illustrated with corporate stock art photography and the other half with clip art drawings is jarring and looks slapped together, not crisp and well thought out.

5. Have a consistent voice. Even if you're doing all the writing yourself, you'll want to be mindful that you use the same general tone and level of formality in all your writing. Choose a writing style that meshes well with the image you'd like to portray and the market you'd like to appeal to and then use it consistently.

Make sure any writers you hire understand your voice and can produce work consistent with it. Considering hiring an editor to look over all written materials to ensure that spelling, grammar and style are consistent through out.

6. Create different versions of your logo. You won't always have the same size and shaped space for your logo, so make sure you're prepared with a logo that has horizontal and vertical version and can be scaled to look good in a variety of sizes. Depending on the design, you might want a version that's black and white, as simply turning off the color can result in a muddy looking mess of a logo.

Being as consistent as possible with the visual look of all your materials helps create a strong brand identity that won't be forgotten. Neglecting these little details can come across as slip shod, unprofessional and brand you as an amateur.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

6 Steps to Creating a Cohesive Brand Identity

Sunday, August 21, 2011

 

Google sitelinks, the SERP element that showcases popular sub-pages of major websites, has pushed forward with its format. The number and size of the sitelinks are increasing.

How Sitelinks Are Changing

We previously discussed the expanded sitelinks, which have been making appearances around the world, although only sparingly in North America. Now Google has made it official, and users "in all supported languages" who are "using a modern browser, such as Chrome, Firefox or IE 7 and above" should see the expanded sitelinks for branded searches.

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Saturday, August 20, 2011

 

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has given his 2011 State of the Word address, and the state of the word is strong. Nearly 15% of the world's websites are powered by WordPress, up from 8.5% last year. For every 100 new active domains in the U.S., 22 of them run the popular open-source blogging software.

Mullenweg's address at the WordCamp conference in San Francisco this week goes through the history of the WordPress user interface, showing how its features developed over time and were then pared down to today's minimal, efficient design. With its frequent adjustments to UI and its healthy market for ready-made and custom themes and plug-ins, WordPress' user friendliness is key to its broad and rapid adoption by content creators. But this year, WordPress conducted its first user and developer survey, receiving over 18,000 responses, and it found a thriving economy for developers and site administrators as well.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Friday, August 19, 2011

 

Steven Wolfram and team have gathered together a big timeline of key events in the history of systematic data and computable knowledge. The team has created a beautiful infographic and a five foot long poster available for mail order (I just bought one) in anticipation of the Wolfram Data Summit in DC early next month. We're really at the dawn of a whole new age of data creation, and so this timeline will likely look like pre-history relatively soon, but it's fascinating and important none the less.

"[When] I first looked at the completed timeline, the first thing that struck me was how much two entities stood out in their contributions: ancient Babylon, and the United States government," Alfram writes. "[It] is sobering to see how long the road to where we are today has been. But it is exciting to see how much further modern technology has already made it possible for us to go."

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Thursday, August 18, 2011

 

What is mobile malware? Where does it come from? How does it get into your phone? These questions are just beginning to surface in the public mindset as splashy headlines warn smartphone users of the dangers lurking to take over their shiny, new mobile device. Security company BullGuard came up with a very informative infographic that shows where mobile malware comes from and how it spreads. Mobile malware does not come from malevolent cupid shooting poison arrows into users' phones. Like PC viruses, malicious mobile programs are perpetrated by people that control botnets and want the information stored in your smartphone for their own means.

Mobile malware can come from just about any vector you could think of. It lurks in application stores (especially third-party stores), text messages, emails, websites, search results and images. Some malware can snoop your device if you are on an insecure public Wi-Fi channel. Take a look at the infographic below and let us know what steps you take to protect your smartphone from those who would do it harm.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

 

Over the past week there has been stirrings in the Android community about the Linux GNU General Public License (GPLv2) and whether or not original equipment manufacturers have violated the license, thus making them vulnerable to lawsuits from thousands of Linux users. The notion is that OEMs have broken the Linux license terms, thus automatically lose their right to distribute Linux on their devices. If that were the case, it would be a big problem for Android and the OEMs since Linux is the very foundation that Android is built upon.

But the GPL situation is not so black and white. Can the Linux GPL issue be a problem for the OEMs? Certainly. Is it actually a problem right now? No, and there is no indication that it ever will be. What the argument amounts to is a miniature battle of "he said, she said" between Linux experts against intellectual property attorney and patent experts. While the IP experts make a compelling argument, the Linux and open source community brings reason to the argument.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

 

LinkedIn has launched a major overhaul to its mobile apps for iPhone and Android, as well as a brand new HTML5 mobile Web app. It's a complete redesign, forgoing the larger grid of menu options in favor of four key sections: Updates, You, Inbox, and Groups & More. The previous menu had too many choices, and some of the titles weren't intuitive. What's the difference between "News" and "Buzz?" Why are "Connections," "Reconnect" and "Invitations" all separate buttons? The new screen simplifies the navigation options.

The update also adds new features. This release addresses what LinkedIn reports is "the #1 most requested feature" from its members, allowing users to access LinkedIn Groups from mobile devices. The app has also been rearranged to open by displaying the Updates stream, which LinkedIn says is "one of the most frequently used areas of the current mobile app."

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Monday, August 15, 2011

 

One of the cornerstones of any successful SEO campaign is the ability to use data to drive SEO results. I like to divide the data analytics process into three main phases: 

Performance Reporting

Opportunity Identification

Prioritization

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Sunday, August 14, 2011

 
Google+ has added its first 16 games. The good news for developers is that Google is only taking a 5 percent commission, compared to Facebook's 30 percent. Not to be outdone, however, Facebook is adding numerous new game features.
 

Saturday, August 13, 2011

 
Conventional wisdom says that Google+ is big with the tech crowd and, more specifically, with males than females. But Experian Hitwise has a different way of looking at who's using Google+. It doesn't dispute the conventional wisdom, per se, but adds perhaps another perspective.
 

Friday, August 12, 2011

 

On-site optimization has long been a cornerstone in any organic search effort. It's an expansive topic and to fully cover it within one article would be impossible.

We're previously discussed keyword selection. As the second of four …

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Thursday, August 11, 2011

 
When you typically think Twitter, you probably think about text based 140 character updates.  New improvements being rolled out geared towards spotlighting user activities and interactions may change this perception.  These very visual changes are very "Facebook-esque"
 

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

 
It's that time of month. The financial analysts are releasing the comScore search market share data again. Last night Business Insider had the numbers up first, which I then confirmed with comScore directly. Below are the July market share figures, as well as the past two months. 
 

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

 

A new local e-commerce application wants to bring local merchants in your town to your smartphone. Pago Mobile is designed to be a new way for businesses to interact with customers through their mobile devices by allowing them to browse, order and pay for local goods through their devices. Pago is rolling out today to over 50 businesses in Mountain View, Calif. and the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

What problem does Pago solve? That is the fair question for any application coming into the e-commerce vertical. Pago has two things going for it – local, mobile and payments. From a merchants perspective, there are not a lot of good options to getting their wares into the phones of the consumers around them with the ability to pay on the spot. Zaarly has attempted to jump into the local, mobile e-commerce bubble but its model of bids and deliveries rub some the wrong way. Pago is much more straightforward.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb