Looks like Google+ is about to take things to a more personal level. Unlike Facebook, Google+ plans to differentiate contacts between: real friends, acquaintances, work people and few other categories. This division is based on the idea that sometimes people simply don’t feel like sharing certain feelings with all their contacts, but maybe just with [...]

Facebook matches advertisers to users based on users’ interests, activities, favorites, their job titles, as well as the names of the groups they belong to and the pages they are fans of. That’s a lot of information, and Facebook is still a place where more often than not people are willing to share an unbelievable [...]

No official word yet from Google A couple weeks ago, Google’s Matt Cutts talked about a new iteration of Google’s Panda update, which he said was already approved and would be hitting soon. The update has been commonly referred to throughout the search industry as “Panda 2.2″. This version is expected to more heavily address [...]

Strong creative can be a huge competitive advantage in the world of paid search. When you can pay less to get more, you’re doing something right. The compounding factors of improved CTR, increased quality score, and reduced CPC can make a tremendous impact on performance. Ad copy testing lies at the heart of seizing this [...]

Social media ROI has remained elusive for numerous marketers despite their best efforts to develop a calculation that will prove the business value of the allotted social media resources. Through a new feature in Google Analytics, some customization to your Google Analytics tracking, and diligent work on the part of your social media team, the [...]

Testimonials are a significant marketing tool. It’s been our experience that asking for a testimonial can be a long and arduous process. Sometimes it seems easier to just ask a friend to repeat after you, or invent a statement that touches on all your key selling features. The value of a real testimonial can’t be [...]

In link building, getting shot down is just part of the game. We know that going in, but we also try to find ways to hedge our bets. Hence, mass emailing and link exchange spam. The broader the net you cast, the better your chances of catching something, right? That kind of theory does help [...]

Developing linkable content for a site has always been a great way to develop links. Instead of the typical written content I’m talking about anything online that people can link to – tools, widgets, cartoons, surveys, statistics, charts, interactive games, etc.The trick is finding the content that will attract links after you’ve actively promoted it. [...]

Last week, Google bought PostRank, a social analytics service that tracks and measures social posts. With this acquisition, Google has gained a resource to better understand the social web, and that resource can be applied to great impact in several of Google’s key social arenas. What Is (or Was) PostRank? PostRank, in their own words, [...]

Search marketers are lucky. Really, we are. We get to work in a medium where we have access to real-time data and can adjust our strategies and execution nearly as quickly. No matter how much we may gripe about the engines’ “black box” algorithms, we can’t argue with performance and a lot of deep data [...]