Gina Broom says, “The average search engine experience for a consumer goes something like this: Something will pop into someone’s head, and they need the Internet to get more information. They then search for what they’re thinking about at that time. Sometimes it’s something they want to buy, and they’re looking to find out how much it costs or where they can buy it from. What you want is for that result that pops up ever so conveniently to be your website. Unfortunately, this isn’t guaranteed to be the”. The Ultimate Rule of Search Engine Marketing Mark... [...]

Robin Neifield says, “There has been lots of noise lately surrounding the effectiveness of marketing on social channels. But don’t be fooled – your brand does indeed need to maintain a presence on social platforms. There has been a lot of public hand-wringing lately about the new Facebook policies that require marketers to pay for marketing messages. Brands that spent a lot of time, effort, and advertising dollars in the last few years building up their fan communities are upset with new restrictions on the promotions language and messaging allowed in News Feed posts. If posts look... [...]

If you want people to find your site, the search engines can be your friend; that is, if you give them what they are looking for. SEO Holy Grail shows you how to do just that without any “black hat” methods. Everything you do is completely legitimate. Often you hear that you need a lot of good backlinks to be ranked high. But Leon Tran has been refining his SEO and has found that you don’t necessarily have to build a large set of backlinks to rank well. (Of course, good backlinks shouldn’t be looked down on. After trying this approach, Tran says he easily generated over... [...]

Rex Santus says, “Earlier this year, Instagram was leading the pack as the fastest-growing social platform. Now, it’s Tumblr and Pinterest, which have edged out the picture-sharing app for greatest increase in active users. Tumblr’s active users grew by 120% in the last six months, according to new stats released by the Global Web Index first spotted by TechCrunch on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Facebook’s active users grew by just 2%”. Tumblr and Pinterest now fastest-growing social platforms Mashable  [...]

Christopher Ratcliff says, “As Facebook continues to ease the way businesses pay-to-play on its network, its other social network Instagram has notoriously kept marketers at a much further arm’s length. Things are starting to change though. If you’re a Facebook user you will have been updated this week on its new terms and conditions. These relate mainly to privacy and giving its users more control over ads. Part of this control includes the introduction of a cross-device ‘opt-out’ button, which allows users to better manage the ads they see on mobile and desktop and location based targeting.... [...]

Susannah Morris says, “The holiday shopping season is upon us! November and December sales for retailers are expected to top $616.9 billion. In the run up to Cyber Monday, let’s take a look at when, where, and how consumers are expected to shop. While there has been some backlash about stores opening on Thanksgiving, shoppers are still expected to spend $2.6 billion in-store, $766 million online, and $192 million on mobile on Thursday alone. Ecommerce provides the best of both worlds for “Black Thursday” because you can start your sales early for the benefit of the post-dinner shoppers,... [...]

If you go to a local business, wanting to sell them anew online service, there’s a good chance they won’t pay attention. A few will be interested, but you will waste a lot of time calling upon owners who don’t care. But if you offer to save them money, 99% of business owners will be interested. The fact is that many of them are paying too much for their services and products, and they don’t know it. Suppose you can make this offer to them. “Don’t pay me anything now. Just let my expert look into your expenses and see if there are ways to save you money.”... [...]

Richard Procter says, “Consumers may trample over each other to get cheaper TVs and laptops this season, but Twitter’s advertising partners may have found the best Black Friday deal of all—the ability to tweet you promotions. Just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the microblogging network announced “Twitter Offers” on Tuesday. The service lets retailers tweet deals directly to customers, and users can easily grab one of these promotions within the tweet itself”. Twitter Lets Retailers Tweet You Deals—Just In Time For Black Friday ReadWrite  [...]

Stan Schroeder says, “The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of a resolution that would see search engines being “unbundled” from their other commercial services. The resolution, which was approved by 384 votes to 174 (with 56 abstentions), focuses on the online search market and its “particular importance in ensuring competitive conditions within the digital single market.” In other words, unbundling would safeguard against Google and other search engines favoring their own services in search results. The parliament called on the European Commission to “consider... [...]

Chris Abraham says, “I just discovered that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) isn’t just a rebrand of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a marketing discipline that is almost universally damned as being shifty, black-hat, and more than just a little shady. What Joe’s Pizza Shack probably needs is an SEO consultant, what Siemens needs is a seasoned SEM expert who not only understands all the tech behind how to make a website hum but also the business processes, ego-wrestling, accountability, and reporting required to seduce Enterprise to where they need to be to take search to the next level,... [...]