Website security as SEO
If you're putting together a list of all the components of a successful SEO strategy, there's a decent chance website security probably isn't on it.
After all, how is website security going to boost your placement in the SERPs?
Adding Wikipedia to the reputation monitoring mix
With the rise of social media, it's no surprise that online reputation monitoring has been a growth market. Knowing what consumers and customers are saying about you on the internet is extremely important.
Generally, sites like Twitter and Facebook get the most attention when it comes to reputation monitoring but there's another site that may be even more important for brands to keep an eye on: Wikipedia.
Google integrates AdSense and Analytics
Google launches a lot of new features on a regular basis. Many of them are important and worth reporting on.
But in my opinion, few are as important to digital marketers as yesterday's announcement that Google has made publicly-available integration between AdSense and Analytics.
Take your analytics anywhere using the Google Analytics API
Do you eat, sleep and breathe web analytics? Do you find yourself constantly checking how many visitors your websites have received today? Is scouring your analytics in search of new wisdom a hobby?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you'll love what Google just announced. If you answered no, there's still probably something of value in it for you too.
Content management: putting it all together
If you made a list of all the essential tools in an online business' toolkit, what would be on it?
Chances are you'd include content management, analytics and multivariate testing.
Yahoo loves multivariate testing
It's one of the most powerful tools in an online publisher's arsenal but it's one that few make effective use of. I'm talking about multivariate testing.
As part of its effort to turn its business around, Yahoo is using multivariate testing extensively on its homepage to figure out which combinations of content and features produce the best results.
Throw out your customer data. Really.
It may be antithetical or even sacrilegious to say so, but companies may have too much customer data for their own good. With internet marketing focused on generating even more of that data through behavioral targeting and social media, it may be time to consider a new theory out of Penn's Wharton School of Business. It's called "data minimization."
According to Wharton marketing professors Eric Bradlow and Peter Fader "data minimization" is a simple but radical concept: keep the customer data a company needs for competitive advantage, and purge the rest. "I think there is a fear and paranoia among companies that ... if they don't keep every little piece of information on a customer, they [can't function]," Bradlow told the Marketing @ Wharton newsletter. "Companies continue to squirrel away data for a rainy day. We're not saying throw data away meaninglessly, but use what you need for forecasting and get rid of the rest."
Are retailers following best practice to improve conversion rates?
Now with our economy firmly in a recession, most retailers no longer have the types of budgets available to replatform. Instead, 2009 will be a year for improving their existing platforms, trying to increase conversion rates, average order values and returning visitor numbers.
So with this primary drive to improve performance, are retailers doing all that they can? Are retailers following best practice to help more visitors complete the buying process, and are retailers removing usability barriers to ensure that in such competitive times visitors aren’t encouraged to find reasons why they shouldn’t complete their purchase?
The impact of display URLs on PPC campaign performance
It's something that's easily overlooked: the impact your display URL has on your PPC campaigns.
What display URLs produce the best results? Which can have a negative impact? Thanks to a small study that was recently conducted, we have some data to consider.
Google hangs sales tag with new products
Another day, two more upgrades for Google's ad capabilities. Google TV now has hourly breakdowns to correlate TV spots and search performance; AdWords now has a template for quickie promotional ads.
The Google TV tracking builds on its analytics platforms that enabled advertisers to track search keyword activity immediately after an ad spot. Now an hourly breakdown of TV impressions and site visits data shows how specific ad airings are performing. Data on how many people viewed the ad is also available. The tool will index audience characteristics and interests at the specific time that the TV ad aired. For index values, 100 is the average. For example, an index of 129 for an interest like photography, means that the program that ran the spot draws 29 percent more photographers than average.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
