Paid Search Drives Offline Sales?

I just finished reading an article, from MediaPost that stated PPC ads help increase in-store purchases. This is great news for the bottom line of the stores/companies running Pay per Click Ads. However, for the marketers, it is very difficult to contribute the off-line sales towards the PPC Campaigns effectiveness. With that being said, new strategies and technologies are beginning to be implemented to ensure that PPC Campaigns get full credit for the online and offline sales that they drive. An example of a strategy being used is implementing coupons via barcodes or keyword phrases, to PPC Landing Pages can help keep track of people seeing the ads online but buying in the store, this is still a work-in-progress. Do you have any other ideas of how to credit the appropriate in-store purchases to the online marketing campaign that initiated the sales process?

Selecting a Sensible Web Analytical Platform For Your Organization

There’s countless blogs, articles, and studies out there that preach about how web analytics is the greatest thing since sliced bread and how it can tie together virtually any marketing effort for an organization and measure their effectiveness side-by-side and against each other. All the features, reports, visuals, metrics, and alerts are great…but only if your organization can dedicate the time, talent, and funds to properly implement and support the platforms.

There’s been more than one instance where we’ve seen a large organization invest in a big and flashy analytical platform like Omniture and WebTrends, and not dedicate the necessary resources to properly implement, support, maintain, or even use it properly. It almost seems like some organizations view these platforms as set-and-forget endeavors, when in reality they are no different than the machinery that is used to make their products or the buildings in which those products are sold. Just because it isn’t tangible does not mean it won’t need ongoing support.

One of the driving reasons these platforms and strategies are improperly executed is because of a lack of budget. Most of the larger analytical platforms use a pay-per-pageview approach to their billing, which for well-traveled websites can add up quickly. After figuring in servers and databases, the total cost for the year can easily stretch into the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This usually swallows up the majority of an analytics budget and doesn’t leave much more room for bringing on talent for proper implementation and usage. So this brings us to the driving point of this blog: Choosing a web analytical platform that your organization can actually afford to support (via either internal talent or external agencies) is a critical step that should not be overlooked.

For some of the aforementioned organizations, selecting a cheaper (or even free) platform like Yahoo! Web Analytics or Google Analytics would have yielded much better insights. We even saw this with one client, as they had both WebTrends and Google Analytics, and the latter platform offered exponentially deeper and more insightful reports.

So whether you are the individual or an agency pitching to the higher-ups of an organization why they should go with analytics, make sure you ask the right questions: What do we really need, and what can we actually afford to support moving forward?

Keep your eye on DaBrian Marketing Group’s website for a more in-depth article on this. Also be sure to follow DaBrian Marketing Group’s new Google+ Page!

Email Marketing- A Quick and Cost Effective Way to Reach Your Target Audience

Email marketing is an important component of a successful Internet marketing strategy, and its benefits include:

1. Staying in front of your target market
Email marketing allows your company to stay in front of your current customers and to build long-lasting relationships and enhance connections.

2. Measurability
Many aspects of email campaigns can be measured, such as the number of opens, click-through rate, and conversions. These key metrics allow for optimization of future email campaigns.

3. Cost effective
Email marketing is a more cost effective method of communicating, as it does not include the cost of printing or postage that direct mail requires.

4. Immediate messages
Messages are delivered immediately, allowing for quick notifications and responses to promotions and sales.

5. Increase traffic to website
By embedding links into your emails, customers can easily access specific pages containing relevant information on your site with just a click.

6. Flexibility
Email marketing provides great flexibility in the type of emails sent, such as newsletters and promotions.

Make sure to take advantage of the numerous benefits email marketing provides.

Event Tracking to Reduce Bounce Rate Due to Affiliate Sites

One of the greatest challenges a web analyst faces in the field is gaining full visibility into all facets of an organization’s online presence. As analysts, we are curious creatures by nature with an unquenchable thirst for data and knowledge. We want to know where traffic is coming from, how these visitors are using the website, and where they are going. Discovering a missing piece to a data collection puzzle can be a double-edged sword: It means we aren’t getting the complete picture, but it also serves as motivation to always be on the lookout for new sources of analytical data.

In the past year, we were approached by a client in the financial services industry that wanted to track their website’s organic performance on search engines as well as receive monthly analytical reporting and recommendations. A few weeks after initial implementation, however, we noticed a consistently high bounce rate to the website. These bounces were primarily happening from the Home page of the website, which is a major red flag to even the most inexperienced of analysts. After some additional analysis and a look at the navigational summary of visitors, we were able to determine that most of these bounces weren’t leaving the website: They were proceeding to the separate secure Online Banking portion of the website. Due to internal security policies of this particular bank, we were unable to implement any direct tracking of this platform beyond the Home page of the website. A new solution to alleviate the high bounce rate needed to be identified.

That’s where event tracking came in. With Google Analytics, event tracking is a method traditionally used to track actions visitors can perform on a website that aren’t captured by the standard analytics script. This often takes the form of a PDF or document download. Since we could not place any sort of tracking code on the Online Banking platform itself, we decided to place the event tracking code on all links on the bank’s website that pointed towards it. The change in the skewed bounce rate for the website was noticeable almost immediately:

Not only did this help alleviate the high bounce rate, but it also provided more insight into how the bank’s customers used the site and where the entered the Online Banking platform from.

There are never perfect circumstances when it comes to web analytics. More often than not, internal policies, procedures and security will stand in the way of getting the complete picture of an organization’s web presence. Learning these policies from the start and identifying alternative solutions will help in overcoming these obstacles.

Be sure to follow us on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to date on the latest in web analytics, SEO, and more!

5 Reasons to Use a CMS-Based Website

If you are considering redesigning or building a new website, a Content Management Systems (CMS)-based website is a must. The use of a CMS website will save you time, money, and create efficiencies.

5 reasons to use a CMS website:

1. Easy to update content: Adding, removing, or updating content may be executed by staff members without the need for a web designer.
2. Design: Simply change the design and appearance of the website without the headache of using editors or creative suites.
3. SEO Friendly: Stay on top of the Search Engine Optimization of the website.
4. Increased Functionality: Plug-ins and widgets may be integrated effortlessly for additional functionality.
5. Security: Content is safely stored in a database.

There you have it. Five quick, great reasons to switch your company's website over to a Content Management System.

Privacy Protection on Search Engines & Social Media vs. Value of Data

USA Today recently ran an article about Facebook's data collection methods and the issues they raise with privacy protection. Although there is very good reason for these concerns to be voiced, consumers should still be aware that not all monitoring is a bad thing, and in fact, a lot of the monitoring that marketing and business intelligence departments do often benefits consumers greatly.

Check out our latest YouTube video that we released earlier today discussing this hot topic:

So what are you thoughts on this? Be sure to leave comments on both the blog and the video!

Don't forget to subscribe to our blog as well as to our YouTube Channel to stay up-to-date on the latest issues, news, and tips on internet marketing, web analytics, SEO, & more! Also be sure to follow DaBrian Marketing Group on Google+!

Top Tips to Stay Relevant to Google Quality Raters & New Google Algorithm November 2011

As we all know, Google recently rolled out an update to its search algorithm. One of the focuses of this update is serving up the most recent, up-to-date information for a user's search query. A human element is also brought into the equation, with the algorithm working alongside Google Quality Raters to rank relevancy and age content. Check out our video below, where DMG's CEO Daniel Laws provides some tips to keep your website relevant and ultimately lead to increased targeted traffic.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Also check us out our new Google Plus page!

Managing PPC on Microsoft adCenter

Just last week Microsoft updated their adCenter Desktop program, making it easier to manage and update PPC Campaigns running on the Bing and Yahoo Search Engines. A few of the changes included faster bulk bid estimates, easier import process of Google AdWords campaigns, default location targeting, and more. For the official announcement and further details about the updates check out the adCenter Community Blog. Now Microsoft adCenter just needs to make the Search Query Report accessible to agency log-ins, since it contains import data to managing keywords. Anyone have any other changes they would to see on adCenter Desktop program?

By the way, have you seen the new changes to the web UI of adCenter? PPC Hero wrote a great post detailing the major changing.

Philadelphia Web Analytics Symposium November 2 & Future of the Mobile Web

This past Wednesday, both the CEO Daniel Laws and Web Analyst Brandon Wensing of DaBrian Marketing Group were able to attend the Web Analytics Symposium at the Philadelphia Ritz-Carlton, hosted by the Web Analytics Association. We were able to sit in on some very interesting lectures and presentations by industry legends like Jim Sterne covering the latest in Web Analytics, as well as the importance of Analytics as a whole as the internet evolves. In addition to the fantastic presentations, the symposium was also a great opportunity for DMG to network with all sorts of Web Analytics and Marketing professionals from all over the northeast region of the United States.

One particular point that came up across a large portion of the presentations on Wednesday was the increasing importance of mobile with regards to the web. This tied directly with countless conversations that have occurred within the walls of the DaBrian Marketing office, as we've felt for a while that companies need to put more emphasis on monitoring and expanding their mobile offerings. If you missed the WAA Symposium on Wednesday, check out our latest YouTube video below. Also be sure to subscribe to both our blog here and our YouTube channel for weekly updates on trends, practices, tactics, and more!

Impact of Google Analytics Premium on Web Analytics & Consultants

Web Analytics solutions such as Google Analytics, WebTrends, and Omniture have continued to evolve with increased functionality for social media and mobile analysis. Unfortunately the gap between free web analytical solutions and enterprise solutions was significant until now. The introduction of Google Analytics Premium not only impacts the web analytics enterprise solutions market but also analysis service providers, business intelligence solutions, and consultants. Before Google Analytics Premium, small and mid-size businesses were forced to use free tools such as Yahoo Analytics or pay an “arm and a leg” for enterprise web analytics solutions such as WebTrends and Omniture. Realistically, there wasn’t much of a middle ground in this space.

With the addition of Google Analytics Premium and several improvements to the free Google Analytics solution, the gap between enterprise solutions just got a little smaller and puts more pressure on the industry to continue demonstrating value for web analytics/business intelligence dollars. It will be interesting to see the industry’s response in the future to Google Analytics Premium as well as how Analytics Consultants will modify their service offering to avoid direct competition with Google.

Alternative PPC Platforms

Check out DaBrian Marketing Group's latest YouTube video, where our Search Engine Marketing Consultant Justin Miller discusses the importance of pursuing alternative Pay-Per-Click platforms.

For more information on our Pay Per Click and Banner advertising services, please check out the SEM Services section of our website! Also, be sure to subscribe to both our blog and our YouTube channel to always get the latest news and tips for SEM, SEO, Internet Marketing, & more!

Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Mobile Accessibility of Your Website

One of the most common mistakes made in the web and e-commerce worlds is the dismissal of the importance of mobile-friendly websites. Mobile activity on the web is increasing exponentially every day as more and more consumers trade their laptops and desktops for smartphones and tablets. Society wants to be mobile and less constricted by the ball-and-chain of cables and cords, yet there are still countless websites that fail to accommodate for this properly.

So what excuse is there NOT to optimize your website for mobile visitors? Web Analytics data and reports have proven this traffic has been increasing hand-over-fist every day. Further analysis even indicates these visitors are trying to access what they need and engage with the website (multiple pages viewed per visit), however they tend to leave before they actually convert. A glance to the average amount of time that they spend on the website compared to normal traffic provides a clear picture of just how much trouble they’re having. If the time they spend is significantly more, it means they’re finding the use of the website difficult or perhaps load times are taking a lot longer than they should because of large images.

More often than not, however, the decision makers will not make a move on a mobile solution based upon website performance metrics alone. That’s when you take a look at the market statistics and demographics. The visual below (from the article located here) shows the breakdown of tablet users according to their social status as well as which age groups they are from:

Keep in mind, the visual above is only covering the tablet users, which is only a segment of the total mobile visitors out there. Even more people have smartphones than tablet devices. The performance metrics are there. The demographical data is there. Don’t ignore the writing on the walls! Optimize your website for mobile!

Why Social Media is a Must for Businesses

Social Media is one of the best ways for businesses to connect and communicate with their target markets. The benefits of Social Media include:

Maximize exposure for minimal cost

When compared to other forms of marketing, participation in Social Media offers a great opportunity to expose your company to the public at a much lower cost than other forms of marketing.

Monitor your brand and image

It is important to be aware of what is being said online about your company. Companies may take immediate action to capitalize on positive feedback and build on the momentum. Likewise, any concerns that are raised can be handled quickly before a problem escalates.

Generate leads

Social Media offers an inexpensive way to attract new customers and promote interest in your company. A network of “friends” can help generate leads by spreading the word about a company’s products or services.

Increase traffic to website

It is easy to direct Social Media users to a company’s website where they can learn more about the business and become engaged in the website.

Engage with customers

The casual environment of Social Media promotes conversation between customers with mutual interests. Also, discussions between representatives and current or prospective customers may easily take place.

Local Search Engine Optimization Package Trial Offer

DaBrian Marketing Group's Business Development Specialist Christopher Brown presents our Special Local SEO Package Trial Offer! For more information on this deal, please check out our SEO Promotion page.

Is Your Pay Per Click Campaign a Success?

For PPC, how do you measure the success of your Campaigns? Is it by the number of clicks, or do you measure visits through analytics? Are you tracking conversions, and if so, how valuable is each conversion? Is your Pay Per Click marketing goal to increase brand awareness or increase sales?

Lots of questions, but they all need to be considered when starting and running a PPC Campaign. Your answers to these questions will drastically change what metrics you focus on and how you manage your campaign. In order to ensure success in the Pay Per Click realm, make sure that you know how you are going to measure success.

SEO & Social Media to Capture ZMOT

We continuously receive questions about the position of SEO within the internet marketing space.  It is true that the waters between SEO and Social media have been merged to some degree, but the result is still relevant results within the search engines.  Also, the mentality of users is still roughly the same: a stimulus-like an email campaign and search for more information.  The recent eBook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) by Jim Lecinski provides further insight into the new mental model. 

Shifting the focus to the mentality of the user has come full circle.  The ability to align SEO and Social Media within your marketing plan will help you attract customers at the ZMOT, but doing so takes a solid strategy and communication from your SEO & Social Media teams.  It’s not enough to implement SEO & Social Media into the plan; what’s more important is that these elements align to attract customers.

Capabilities of Multichannel Analytics

One of the greatest challenges in the past has been effectively tracking traditional marketing methods like billboards, direct mail pieces, and print advertisements alongside internet marketing efforts.  This is much more attainable nowadays via Multichannel Analytics.  DMG's Web Analyst Brandon Wensing describes some of the benefits of using this method to yield imperative insights into your high level marketing efforts:

Effectiveness of Email Marketing

If you’re looking for an increased return on investment regarding your marketing efforts look no further. When it boils down to it, the most effective marketing channel is still Email Marketing, as indicated in the chart below. The best thing about email marketing is that it gets better as you use it. Once you have the basics, consistent branding, list building, message crafting, and email delivery, you’ll be able to increase the effectiveness. According to a JupiterResearch report, using Web analytics to target email campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and eighteen times the profits of broadcast mailings. With all that being said, implementing sophisticated analytics and tactics such as segmentation, targeting, multichannel integration, A/B testing and social sharing is the best place to start. Nonetheless, it’s almost a no brainer when it comes to using email marketing. Whether you are doing it in-house, just using the basics, or whether you outsource it to an internet marketing agency, for sophisticated analytics and tactics, Email Marketing is an opportunity you can’t pass up.

PPC Management - Microsoft adCenter Desktop

The Microsoft Desktop is an excellent tool to monitor, manage, and update all your PPC campaigns in adCenter. First, you have the three main screens – browser, manager, dashboard. The Browser pane keeps your Campaigns organized and lets you know what level (Ad Group, or Campaign) you are viewing. The Dashboard screen display customizable visuals, tables, and important metrics.

The final screen is the manager, which is the most useful for updating and maintaining your campaigns. Within the Manager screen use the Home, Manage, and Research tabs. The Home tab gives options to sync changes between the desktop and your account, as well as import and export files. To create new campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads use the Manage tab. Finally, the last tab is the research tab, which allows you to learn about the demographics, estimated monthly traffic and more keyword information.

Overall, this is a great tool to use to help monitor and manage your PPC Campaigns on adCenter. It is a one-stop shop for everything you need to do to maintain a well performing PPC campaign. I am sure that once you get comfortable with the navigation, Microsoft adCenter Desktop will help you save time managing your PPC efforts.

Five Reasons to Monitor Your Internet Marketing Efforts

Over the past several years, the greatest challenge facing internet marketers and web analysts has been convincing superiors and clients of the value of monitoring all of their web-based efforts. All-too-often, they will fire back with something along the lines of “Oh, we know how many visits we’re getting to the site.” This statement usually comes from an organization that has their overworked IT department “monitoring” their site’s activity. Little do these organizations know that the visits metric means little-to-nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially if you are not using it in unison with the countless other metrics that are available.

So perhaps you’ll be making a pitch to the higher-ups in your company about implementing a web analytics strategy, or maybe you are one of the higher-ups and are curious to see whether or not it’s worth it. Well, here are 5 great reasons to use web analytics to track your website and internet marketing efforts:

1. Visits Don’t Mean Anything! As mentioned before, simply knowing how many visits your website received in a month does not mean you know how your website is performing. There are so many more metrics that should be considered that can be combined to yield more detailed and useful statistics about the website. You can have all the visits in the world, but if they’re not converting, then they’re practically worthless.


2. Discover Where Marketing Efforts Should Be Focused. Not only can Web Analytics solutions uncover where your visitors are coming from, but it can also shine light on where your organization should be focusing its marketing and internet efforts.


3. Know What Your Visitors Are and Are NOT Looking For. Paying attention to what pages and content your visitors are viewing most often can uncover what your consumers are actually looking for. Just the same, it can also show what visitors are less interested in, so you can save your company’s time and efforts in pushing the wrong products, services, or information.


4. Monitor Traditional Marketing Effectiveness. Web Analytics isn’t just limited to seeing how well your website is doing or where your visitors are coming from. When implemented by web analytics ninjas, you can also see how effective your more traditional marketing methods are at driving traffic, and more importantly, conversions, to your website.


5. Hone in on Your Target Market. Using methods like advanced segmentation and conversion tracking, you can identify who is spending the most quality time on your site and who is most likely to spend money. In doing this, a much clearer picture is painted of who your organization should be reaching out to the most.

There you have it- Five great reasons to seriously consider Web Analytics for your organization. In an economic climate like today’s, your organization cannot afford to turn its nose up to this, as monitoring your internet marketing strategies and efforts yields crucial insights into increasing conversions and sales.

Mix Online Marketing Strategies for Optimal Results

To reach the greatest number of customers, it is important to utilize a mix of online marketing strategies. These strategies include: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC), Local Listings, Social Media Marketing (SMM), and Email Marketing. A brief description of each of these strategies follows.

The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to improve the ranking of a website’s position in search engine results pages. This strategy enables your website to be seen by your target audience before the competitions’ websites.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) provides more control over placement of your ads and website on search engine results pages. Businesses may control when, where, and how often their ads show up when related searches occur on search engines.

Local Listings are especially useful for companies providing a product or service in a specific location. They are displayed in search results and may include information such as a phone number, address, map, hours of operation, and specials. This is a great way to connect with the local community.

With the rapid rise in the use of social media, the importance of Social Media Marketing (SMM) has never been more important. SMM offers a way to keep in constant touch and get feedback from your target audience.

Email Marketing is best used to encourage current customers to return to your business. This may be achieved by promoting specials, informing of upcoming events, and thanking customers for their business.

Each company should take the opportunity to customize their online marketing mix to best suit their needs.

Social Media: Monitoring, Marketing, Measuring, Testing, for Optimum Result.

A while back I posted a blog with a helpful list for those who were wondering how to find out if their social media was actually helping them or not. Well, I decided to add to the list and here are a few more items to keep an eye on.

1. Brand mentions in online media. So, you have a highly active social network and members are talking about your company, the company’s brands, your service/product names and maybe even your company url. Measure and track both positive, negative, and neutral mentions, and their quantities for all of them. This is also something that can be done even if you do not have an active social network. Because you are not active does not mean they will not talk about you through online mainstream media, forums, blogs, comments, posts, update, tweets, and reviews. Just remember “Stick and stones may break your bones, but, online, words can last forever.” If you don’t find the negative mentions and rectify them, others will stumble upon and judge for themselves.
2. Measure & Monitor Competitors. Know what your competitors are doing from a social media marketing standpoint, measure and Monitor their mentions, and know their share of voice compared to yours
3. Virality. Social members might be sharing Twitter tweets and Facebook updates relevant to your company, but is this info being reshared by their networks? How soon afterwards are they resharing? How many FoaFs (Friends of a Friend) are re-sharing your links and content?
4. Blog interaction. This is actually more than one metric lumped together. Blogs are part of a SMM (Social Media Marketing) toolkit, but only if you allow comments and interaction with readers by responding. If you’re doing this, encourage responses either directly in the comments section of blog posts, or via Twitter. (Use a blog widget that allows this.) If your blog’s content is suitable for social voting (Digg, Propeller, Mixx, etc.) or social bookmarking (Delicious, Stumbleupon) sites, install a blog plugin that displays the necessary sharing “buttons”, then track referrals back from those sites

As I said before, if you’re doing social media on your own or if an agency is doing it for you make sure that while they’re Marketing, they are Measuring and Testing for optimum Results.

Testing Changes in PPC Advertising

As many of you have probably heard, both Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter are testing multiple aspects of PPC advertising. Some items being tested include placement, layout, ad extensions, images within text ads, and more. Descriptions of each follow:

Placement

It has been reported that text ads have been spotted with the organic results on search pages.

Layout

The Headline can sometimes include the first line of description and the URL has jumped to just under the Headline.

New Ad Extensions

These let you have searchers request that you contact them via phone of email directly from your ad.

Images within Text Ads

Lastly of the ones that I am mentioning is the ability to show off products being advertised or the company logo within the contextual ad space.

To wrap up, keep an eye out for some, if not all, of these aspects being tested to be implemented into either Microsoft adCenter and/or Google AdWords. Also remember that no matter how frustrating these changes are to keep up with, both Google and Microsoft are trying to improve their services so that we as online markets can improve our CTR and Conversions.

The Latest and Greatest in SEO

Here is some of the latest and greatest we’ve found going on in the Search Engine Optimization world:

1.     Google introduced new and improved site links which means visibility to sub-navigation pages, link selection changes from query to query, and delivery of relevant links. 

2.     Yahoo's new image presentation also allows for easy searching of galleries, a connection to your friends' Facebook images, and easy navigation of full-sized images.

3.     Content is still king.  Don’t use redundant articles, duplicate content, limit the automatically generated content, and reduce the high ad-to-content ratio on your web pages.

4.     Google + and other social media metrics will be part of the evolution of search engine optimization and link building.

5.     Link Building isn’t going away but it may not weigh as heavily as it once did in the overall search algorithm. 

Monitor Phone Lines, Billboards, Direct Mail Pieces, and More Using Multichannel Analytics

Most people involved with the marketing facet of a company would agree that there are countless avenues to market with. Websites, banner advertising, e-mail marketing, direct mail marketing, cold calling…the list goes on and on. Over the past decade, it’s become increasingly important to monitor marketing effectiveness. Web analytics tools have been improving as quickly as the rest of the internet has, allowing for more dynamic, in-depth analysis with every new update. With these new updates and improvements, it has now become possible to monitor much more than just a website.

When implemented properly and in the hands of a web analytics ninja, platforms like Google Analytics can be used to monitor and track the effectiveness of more than just websites. Using advanced integration methods such as event tracking, virtual pageviews, and cross-domain tracking, these tools can be used to track everything from your organization’s social media efforts to phone calls. That’s right: phone calls. Call tracking is the latest trick in the analytical magic bag, using a hidden, blank web page bound to a specific phone number to track calls via “pageviews”. Call tracking isn’t the only trackable avenue of marketing that isn’t limited by the internet. Using things like custom phone numbers and vanity URLs, it is also possible to use web analytics platforms to effectively track direct mail and even billboard advertising.

As human beings, we can’t help but think in silos. In today’s marketing world, it is crucial that we break away from this old way of thinking and see how all of these facets and avenues of advertising are tied together. When data from all of these areas of marketing is combined, it can generate crucial business intelligence and reveal insights that could give your organization the edge it needs.

Don’t Get Left Behind—Mobilize

According to research conducted by Google, “over half of all Americans will own a smartphone” by the end of 2011. As a result, consumers will be more likely to use their smartphones to make online purchases. Therefore, businesses must respond to this trend by creating mobile-optimized sites. Mobile-optimized sites provide users with a version of the full website that is more easily used on smartphones. Often, the version of a full website contains numerous links, small text, small clickable areas, and many images. These elements make for a difficult and frustrating experience on a mobile users behalf—so much so, that the user may leave your website.

On the other hand, mobile-optimized sites contain fewer images to decrease load time, tabs that allow for easy navigation, large clickable areas, and categories that enable consumers to narrow their search. Because of these features, the consumer may more easily access your business’ information, service, and/or product. Furthermore, Mobile-optimized sites often contain links to the business’ social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter accounts, thereby creating more exposure for your company.

As a result of the increase of smartphone users, it is crucial for all businesses, small and large, to create a mobile-optimized website or they will be left behind.

Bing Gets Creative: Testing Ad Placement with adCenter

Recently Microsoft’s Bing has confirmed that they are running tests by showing Ads via Microsoft adCenter intertwined with Organic Results. Though there are some screen shots out there, I have not had the opportunity to see ads within Organic Search Results. Another change that I have noticed is the extra benefit of being the number 1 or 2 ad in the overall search results. In addition to being listed at the top, in those top 2 ad spots, the top 2 ads are also shown at the bottom of the first page adding more compelling value.

I’m glad to see that Microsoft adCenter is testing and trying to improve their services. As a PPC advertiser, who is adCenter Certified, I would now like to know if my ads are getting clicks while at the top of the page, the bottom of the page, or somewhere in between. I hope they are measuring this to help educate us all on where the best placement is and whether it is beneficial to have an ad in the middle of Organic Results. Only time can tell if this will be something that Bing will use in the near or distant future, but my guess is we’ll see some variation sooner rather than later.

The Next Step In Social

For some strange reason, there are still those who believe social media is just a fad, but more people have realized that social media is here to stay. Regardless of the side your on, you should still be informed of what’s to come. In this article I will cover a few things to expect in the future of social media.

1. I foresee companies deciding to build social e-commerce stores on social sites, like Facebook. With a social platform like Facebook that has 700+ million users, it’s hard to believe that companies won’t try to capitalize on that further. Why not keep the prospective customers in one place where they can shop and socialize.
2. The physical world and digital world will become more connected. With the increase in smart-phone and tablet users, 1 in 2 people by December 2011, it becomes easier to stay connected. Meanwhile, app developers create more and more ways to connect the two worlds with the tap of a button.
3. There will come a time when data will find you instead of the other way around. With all of the companies we allow to collect data on the who, what, when, where, why and how we do things online, what we are interested in will begin popping up once we log on, without even searching for it.
4. SEO & Social SEO will become more important as time goes on to prevent an information overload. Due the immense amount of information that will be coming in, not only the standard info that’s on the internet, but also social info that increases every day, today’s search engines will have to adapt. This means that we will see new search engines to search only social info, starting the Social Search Revolution.
5. Pay-Per-Share will become more common. With so many people sharing on a normal basis why not generate money from it. Twitter has begun the wave and I feel many will follow suit with their own variations of pay-per-share programs in order to increase profits.

Internal Site Search Usage: Gateway into the Visitor’s Mind

The main goal of virtually every single marketing strategy is to understand what the target market wants. Whether your particular strategy involves generating more leads or increasing sales, it is common marketing knowledge that you must know what your customer is looking for. In the wide world of web design, internet marketing, and web analytics, there are many avenues of data and insights that can lead to more targeted marketing.

In particular, internal site search is a very important aspect of your website that should be tracked and analyzed carefully. If your website supports this functionality, visitors can use it to find specific products, services, or other pages on your site quickly and easily. Just as monitoring the top-performing keywords and phrases visitors used to find your website organically on search engines is very important, paying close attention to how your visitors search your internal site is also crucial. It can raise the following questions:

What are visitors searching for the most?

Are they able to find what they’re looking for? If not, is it a product or service you can carry or offer in the future?

Are visitors searching for pages more than using the actual navigation menu?

Paying attention to the internal site search report for your website can yield some interesting results you may not have anticipated before. It may indicate that people are looking for products or services you don’t currently offer. It could also point out detrimental holes into the structure, navigation, and optimization of your website that could negatively affect conversion rates. Monitoring this aspect of your website can help streamline your overall web presence and internet marketing approach, as well as provide a look into the minds of your visitors.