NSFW: LoveHoney finds a way to makes its sales data sexy
They say sex sells. And UK retailer LoveHoney is, uhm, in the business of selling sex. In an effort to sell more of it, the company has come up with a simple yet clever way to make its sales data sexy.
LoveHoney's new UK Sex Map gives customers (and curious onlookers) the answer to a simple question: how sexy is my town?
Search experts weigh in on Google and Bing's real-time deals with Twitter
Twitter's deals with Microsoft (Bing) and Google have the blogosphere and Twittersphere abuzz. 'Real-time search' has been a hot topic in 2009 and there has been much speculation on Twitter's strategy vis-à-vis the real-time search opportunity. It appears that we now know what that strategy is: sell firehose access to the Twitter stream to the search engines and let them do what they do best.
The Bing and Google deals could be significant. Depending on what Bing and Google decide to do with their Twitter firehose, internet users could potentially see SERPs that are heavily influenced by Twitter activity, which would mean that SEOs will have to deal with Twitter as a 'ranking factor'. Of course, nobody knows all of the details yet, which is why I thought it would be worthwhile to see what experts and observers are saying about the deals.
Four tips for analysing SEO Google Analytics style
Having spent time improving your SEO, building natural links and optimising on site elements then I bet you cannot wait to see the results. If you're anything like most people (including yours truly), you'd look at traffic to your site as an indication of how well you've done. Although the end result is higher numbers of visitors to your site due to better ranking, it might be while before your ranking will improve.
On the other hand by using Google Analytics it's easier to see short term improvement in your SEO by extracting hidden data gems so it's really a question of knowing where to look. Here are four tips...
Econsultancy's top 25 blog posts of the year
I've been digging around Google Analytics today to make sense of a few trends, and also to see what kind of content has been popular on the blog this year.
I guess it's unsurprising to note that posts on Twitter and social media have been particularly well-received. Lists continue to work as a scannable, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin format, and our how-to and tools-based posts are always popular.
At any rate, I thought I'd aggregate these posts together for your viewing pleasure, and to provide - hopefully - another handy bookmark for you.
10 reasons people criticize SEO
SEO is a polarizing subject. Bring it up in the company of the tech set and chances are you'll get a debate not unlike one you might get when talking about religion and politics.
A lot of the criticism of SEO is misplaced while some of it isn't. When addressing SEO criticism, it helps to have an understanding of why critics are so skeptical. Here are top 10 reasons.
Econsultancy's Peer Summit: What we learned.
Econsultancy held its first American Peer Summit this week, and we
learned a lot from the marketers who gathered in New York at the
Metropolitan Pavilion.
We brought together about 100 digital marketers from such brands as Conde Nast, The Wall Street Journal, JP Morgan and Yahoo, and sat them down together to discuss their issues and upcoming plans in roundtable discussion led by experts on such topics as email marketing, social media, user experience and site optimization.
It was an off-the-record event, but there were some themes that continued to pop up. Many digital marketers at large brands are seeing a shift in acceptance of online marketing in their companies, though getting their online and offline teams to cooperate on advertising buys and large decision-making is still an uphill battle.
SEOs are not spammers, evildoers, or opportunists
It seems like every few months, somebody has to write a blog post
calling SEO a 'scam' of some sort. It's a meme that always works and
this time around, it's coming from a guy named Derek Powazek, who calls
SEOs "spammers, evildoers, and opportunists".
It's a great linkbait, which, ironically, is sure to help Powazek's SERPs.
What’s on your Google wishlist?
Google remains synonymous with search, but we all know that there’s so much more to it than that.
Most internet professionals use Google’s apps and services to help power their businesses. It’s pretty much unheard of for a website owner to be unfamiliar with Google Adwords, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, much less to avoid using any of these products.
The trouble is, as good as they are, there is always scope for improvement. So here are my five wishes for improvements to Google’s existing product set. Admittedly they are not the most ambitious of requests: they’re simply tweaks that I think Google can introduce quickly, perhaps with the exception of the first one…
If '25% of bloggers' post paid content, who can you trust?
I received an email the other day, which caused me some significant concern. It was a request, which came out of the blue, asking me to consider to be paid for featuring certain content on my personal blog.
For me, this is a very unwanted and somewhat scandalous approach and I sincerely hope other bloggers feel the same way. If you think about it, it is a very seedy means to encourage independent people who take the time to blog about subjects they care about, to succumb to the incentive of money.
Google wants to crawl your AJAX
Every day, more and more web designers and developers are taking advantage of new technologies and tools that enable more enjoyable user experiences. From jQuery to Flex, designers and developers have no shortage of options for building more intuitive, responsive and efficient websites.
But many, if not most, of these options come at a price: an SEO hit. That's because it's difficult for search engines to make sense of content that is controlled by these technologies and tools.
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
