January is just around the corner! Do you have your social media marketing KPIs lined up for the new year? Are you looking for innovative new ways to boost your fan base, site traffic and convert your followers into paying customers? Learn the latest tactics and best-practices for Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest. Whether you’re managing your brand’s communities, driving traffic with content or buying paid ads, SMX Social Media Marketing is meant just for you. Have a look at the agenda, jam-packed with proven techniques and tools. SMX Social Media Marketing is programmed by t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX | SMX & DMD Alerts

It's been about six months since Bing unveiled its Social Sidebar, and the search engine is now testing a new format that drops the gray background and which shows more matching content from friends and social networks. Before & After Here's an example of how the Social Sidebar still looks for most people: Here's the "after" view, or how it appears to the tiny number of people seeing the new look: The Visual Changes In terms of visual changes, the new format: Replaces the gray background to keep the sidebar with the same white background as the rest of the search page Re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft: Bing Social Search | Top News

Standard channel performance analysis makes the assumption that a click from all channels behaves the same way. Picture your weekly performance report - in a given week you observe x clicks and y conversions coming from a given channel (eg PPC, Organic search, Display, Remarketing Facebook, etc). If one channel looks better than the others you shift budgets or bids accordingly. It’s standard practice but is it the complete picture? What if all channels aren’t equal? A click from one channel might be worth more than a click from another channel, especially over longer periods of time. A [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Semantic SEO is a fairly new Web marketing tactic that combines search engine optimization and semantic Web technology. Semantic SEO includes a focus on artificial intelligence to understand a user’s intent (i.e., the meaning of the query) in addition to the reliance on text, keywords and links in search algorithms. I wrote before about using structured markup in How Retailers Can Improve Product Visibility Using Structured Markup. A couple weeks ago in E-Commerce SEO Using Schema.org Just Got A Lot More Granular, Aaron Bradley wrote that Google had integrated e-commerce schemas from Good [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Schema.org | Search & Retail

During the last 12 months (November 2011 to November 2012), SEO professionals have witnessed stunning changes from Google that impact SEO. Reputation & Trust Two words I frequently saw or heard this year were reputation and trust. I am writing about the credibility of a website's content, design, and external links, not reputation management as an SEO service. Since day one, Google and its fellow search engines promoted consistent quality while criticizing trickeries. What changed is Google can police bad behavior more effectively and broadly than ever before. Google got teeth. Googl [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO

Social media has changed the way our world works. With these changes come new opportunities for businesses such as lead generation, real-time customer service and connecting with brand evangelists. Today, more and more companies are integrating social media into their marketing plans. This white paper covers 8 tips that Sysomos recommends to help build your brand with social media. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages

Happy Thanksgiving Day! Both Google and Bing has special logos and themes up on their home pages today. Google has a Google Doodle representing the Thanksgiving Day parade, with the Google letters as hot air ballons. Bing has a Turkey getting a warm kiss from a friend: For some reason, Yahoo doesn't have a special logo up today - which is not typical of Yahoo. But Dogpile, AOL, and Ask.com have logos. Last year, Google had a Thanksgiving Day logo that was their first sharable Doodle ever. Related Logos: Google Does Thanksgiving Logo Early, First Ever One Sharable On Go [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | Microsoft: Bing

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Nokia’s HERE Maps For iOS A DisappointmentNokia has many fans around the world who believe that its mapping service is the best one out there. And in selected ways it might be. Nokia offered “offline” maps well before Google. The company is also the go-to mapping provider for third parties, such as Yahoo and Yandex. In addition, Nokia plays an increasingly [...] Unstructured Data Brings Search Effectiveness To DisplayMusic lover [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Nokia has many fans around the world who believe that its mapping service is the best one out there. And in selected ways it might be. Nokia offered "offline" maps well before Google. The company is also the go-to mapping provider for third parties, such as Yahoo and Yandex. In addition, Nokia plays an increasingly important role on the back end for Bing Maps both on Windows Phone 8 devices and on the PC. Nokia subsidiary Navteq was once one of the primary data providers for Google Maps until Nokia acquired the company for roughly $8 billion in 2007. All this suggests that Nokia's spl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

Music lovers are able to buy individual songs without buying the whole album. Investors are able to buy individual stocks without buying a mutual fund or ETF. Search marketers are able to bid on individual search terms without buying pre-packaged bundles of terms. Until recently, however, display marketers have been mostly confined to targeting audience segments, without the ability to identify and bid on the individual components within those audience segments. This is now changing with the advent in display advertising of targeting with unstructured data. A Perfect Pair: Unstructured Dat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Search & Display

In the last couple of weeks, two well-known search tool providers -- Raven and SEOmoz -- have had their access to the AdWords API revoked, with little public explanation, as was reported by Kahena Digital Marketing. But Google denies that this is a "crackdown" or widespread enforcement activity, saying it's all in a day's work of ensuring compliance with the terms of service for its API. Here's the official statement from a Google spokesperson: "We regularly audit developers to make sure they comply with the terms of our AdWords API so that AdWords customers get the best experience when t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: APIs

There has been a lot of discussion in the SEO world lately around structured data and rich snippets in the SERPs. If you are not familiar with structured data, it is basically a way to explain the content of your website to the search engines in a trusted (structured) format. You can think back to the good-old-days when all you had to do was update your META tags… until this was abused so much that Google stopped using them. What Is Structured Data & Why Should You Use It? Although Google doesn’t currently use structured markup data for ranking purposes, there are several benefits [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | Schema.org

There are now enough indications to suggest that any antitrust settlement between the FTC and Google -- and the FTC would much prefer to settle than test its case  in court -- won't involve "vertical search." An earlier Reuters report, probably resulting from an internal FTC leak, suggested that vertical search wasn't the core of the agency's case against Google. Today Bloomberg is reporting that the FTC is "wavering" on whether to pursue a formal action against Google. In particular the agency's own people (anonymous sources) suggest they can't make the "vertical search bias" claim stick [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: General | Legal: Regulation | Top News

The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. Black Friday comes at the end of the week, followed by the increasingly popular Cyber Monday. While there are plenty of deal sites, there also remain traditional shopping search engines that consumers may wish to use. Shopping search engines, or perhaps more properly, product and price comparison services, were one of the first specialized "vertical" search types to emerge in the early days of the web. The first services, like Andersen Consulting's BargainFinder, were "intelligent agents" designed to grab product info from specific retailer web [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines | Top News

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: No, That Wasn’t A Panda Update — But One Is ComingWe’ve been hearing reports from within the SEO community that a significant Google update happened starting this past Friday throughout the weekend. Google tells us there was no Panda update over the weekend but is not confirming or denying if there was another type of update over the weekend. Google did however tell us they [...] AdWords Adds Reporting On Trigger Keywords, Amid Othe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Forrester, the large marketing technology analysis organization, has released the final of its quarterly Forrester Wave reports related to search marketing. The first, Forrester Rates The Top Large Search Marketing Agencies, offered an assessment of large, full service (meaning agencies that offer both organic SEO and PPC) and agencies who serve large clients of $1 billion or more in revenue. The second, The Top SEO Platforms, the relatively new set of tools that has emerged over the past few years to help SEOs automate and bring more efficiency to a broad range of search optimization tasks. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads | SEM Industry: Outsourcing | SEM Industry: Stats

In this white paper, you will learn what successful marketers do differently to achieve success with Facebook's advertising platform Marketplace. New tools, provided by Facebook, help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their ads. This report identifies several ad-technology start-ups that help marketers make their Facebook advertising more effective. Download Now » [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages

Recently I had a chance to sit down with two veterans of the search industry, Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media and fellow Search Engine Land contributor, Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster, after their session “From Keywords to Buy Words” at SES Chicago. The conversation started with keywords, but took on a life of its own as we discussed Google, Bing, attribution, and even urinal advertising. Jenny Halasz (JH): What do you think are the most important issues facing how we think about keywords? Andrew Goodman (AG): Evolution is what we feel most comfortable with, and we are hop [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEM Industry: Conferences

What if you could only spend one hour each week identifying some of your biggest opportunities and problems? What would you spend the time doing? That was a question - well, more of a “challenge” given to me by a few attendees of a recent Advanced Keyword Modeling presentation. While the many possible analysis were great, they were limited by time and wanted to know of all of them, which I personally would do first. First, the 60 minutes does not include gathering the data and building the reports. Since the challenge was to me and I would obviously use the keyword management tool I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To | How To: SEO | Intermediate | Multinational Search

We've been hearing reports from within the SEO community that a significant Google update happened starting this past Friday throughout the weekend. Google tells us there was no Panda update over the weekend but is not confirming or denying if there was another type of update over the weekend. Google did however tell us they plan on releasing a Panda refresh within a week or two. So do expect a Panda refresh sometime by the end of this month, leading into early next month. We did ask Google twice about the reports of a Google update. We asked them if they can tell us if it wasn't Panda, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Panda Update | Google: SEO | Top News