Trends & Predictions For 2011

Digital Marketing Trends

The announcement of the Google AdWords call tracking program validated this prediction, but the word “beta” at the end of the program indicates I was a little premature.

So what should marketers expect to see for 2011?

Rising Costs-Per-Click

Only three things are certain in a search marketer’s life: death, taxes, and rising CPC’s. With ad dollars continuing to migrate from the offline to the online world, costs per click will continue to rise for years to come.

To combat this cost increase, marketers will have to double down on match type and negative keyword management, creative testing and campaign structure optimization to lower costs and increase conversion rates.

Expect tool vendors to respond with increased automation, allowing marketers to succeed with these optimizations at scale. Advertisers will be forced to re-evaluate the right level of automation for their business, and put the necessary controls in place to ensure automation delivers high quality results.

Rise Of Mobile and Social Platforms, Fragmentation, And The New Rules Of Marketing

With an ever-increasing number of mobile and social users, now advertisers must deliver content on more platforms, in more formats and account for more contexts.

Advertisers will need to look past the website towards investments in mobile applications, Facebook pages, twitter feeds and even sites like Groupon or Google Places. Look for advertisers to increasingly convert users off site, whether via mobile, local or social apps. As they do, advertising campaigns will become tailored to the requirements of specific platforms, increasing complexity for the marketer without necessarily increasing revenues. As this shift occurs, early adopters will benefit from building a multichannel customer base at a time when acquisition costs are still relatively low.

Google Gets Social, Facebook Gets Serious

Look for Google to respond by overlaying a sentiment analysis on top of its organic results. This new, more social search algorithm will allow users to rate search results or even websites, and have user “likes” factored into ranking algorithms.

Google is getting more social, Facebook will get more serious. To expand the value of its ad network, Facebook will extend its ads beyond Facebook to participating publisher sites. This new ad network will enable 1:1 targeting based on demographic and placement characteristics, increasing CPMs for publishers and offering the first true challenge to the Google Display Network.

Search Engine Marketing Trends

1. CPCs Will Continue To Increase By 12-15% per Year
2. Cross Channel Optimization Will Become More Important Than Ever
3. Bing Will Continue To Gain Marketshare After A Short-Term Marketshare Loss
4. Smarter, Bargain-Centric Customer
5. Mobile Will Finally Take Off. (Several start-ups are working on enabling mobile ecommerce. Google itself announced that it is working on a phone that will replace credit cards.)

CREDIT: SEARCH ENGINE LAND

Useful Website Analytics Tools

If you have chosen a top business hosting package or a cheap website hosting package, you will find various website analysis tools in your web hosting admin panel.

Website Analysis Tools, Aw Stats, are typically included in both business hosting and cheap website hosting packages and these tools are indeed good. However, if you want options when it comes to website analytics tools, here are some suggestions.

Whether you are running a blog or an e-commerce site, this information is vital. That’s why it’s key to have a good set of tools providing you with website analytics.

JAWStats

JAWStats is a free, open-source website statistics and analytics package. It runs in conjunction with AWStats and produces clear and informative charts, graphs and tables about your website visitors.

JAWStats is a free web statistics and analytics package. It reads log files created by the ever-popular AWStats web statistics software and outputs the information in it’s own format.

Goingup!

Goingup! integrates popular analytics & SEO tools in one easy-to-use interface to see how your website is performing from all points-of-view. GoingUp! now lets you earn points while using our web analytics tracking.

Soon, you’ll be able to use these points for premium services such as search engine promotion, keyword rank monitor and more.

Clicky

Clicky also made the list of useful website analysis tools not only because it has tons of great features but also because it is one of the few website analysis tools you can use from your iPhone.

Clicky Web Analytics is simply the best way to monitor, analyze, and react to your blog or web site’s traffic in real time.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way.

With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

W3Counter

W3Counter is a free, hosted website analytics solution for answering the key questions about your website: who’s your audience, how they find your site, and what interests them.

Woopra

Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. We deliver the richest library of visitor statistics in the industry through our innovative desktop application.

W3Perl

W3Perl can use server’s logfiles and/or be used as a page tagging tool. The perl scripts analyze logfiles and produce HTML/PDF reports. It can be run from the command line or from the web interface.

Piwik

Piwik has all the features you can expect from analysis application. Its main advantage is that its features come in the form of plugins, which means you can choose which features to get and which to skip. Piwik is a PHP MySQL software program that you download and install on your own webserver.

Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics.

TraceWatch

TraceWatchme Web Stats and Traffic Analysis Lets you keep track of the visitors to your website in real time with detailed statistics and deep analysis using an innovative user interface for FREE and helps you make your website more effective.

Snoop

Unlike almost all the other tools on the list, which are either used on the server of their developer, or have to be installed on your web host, Snoop is a desktop application. Snoop has a Windows and Mac version and after you install it, it runs in your tray and you get notified if an important event on your site occurs.

Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate also provides real-time stat tracking and can alert you when a visitor performs a particular action on your site. It also features heat map technology that lets you see where visitors are clicking. it measures your influence on the web in real-time. Gain up-to-the-minute insight into your audience, then adapt to meet their needs and watch your traffic grow.

Yahoo! Web Analytics

Yahoo! Web Analytics is a highly customizable, enterprise-level website analytics system designed to help website businesses increase sales and visitor satisfaction, reduce marketing costs and gain new insight on online customers.

Yahoo! Web Analytics is more than simply a reporting tool. It is a powerful, and highly flexible, data analysis tool. Both near real-time and historical data can be segmented instantly and visualized with advanced graphs to help marketers and site designers answer specific business questions and find new insights to improve their business.

WordPress.com Stats

If your site runs on WordPress and your not crazy about being overwhelmed with too many features, then WordPress.com Stats might be right for you.

FireStats

FireStats is free for non-commercial usage &it costs 25$ per installation for commercial usage

Mint

Okay, Mint isn’t exactly free. is an extensible, self-hosted web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, popular pages and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint’s flexible dashboard.

Blog Tracker

Blog Tracker is an invisible tracker that will count your blog visits and other blog statistics. This product is completely free! One account permits to track up to 20 projects!

What SEO Clients Must Understand

1. SEO is not a On-Off Switch
We had a client that after they signed up, the very next week they were looking for results and we were barely done with keyword research and mapping them out to the pages and working on the content and everything else. SEO is not like an on-off switch that you simply turn on. There is a lot of research going on. Set your client’s SEO expectations right and explain to them the process you will be going through, even at a very high-level in the beginning just to set the expectations correctly.

2. We need to fix the code
The site is not broken, why fix it? SEO consist of onpage and offpage SEO factors. And in onpage factors, there are some sites that are really whacked out in the code. This should not be a problem at all, but if it was not clear who will do the changes, or if there are extra charges for the changes, this can freak out clients and might even give the impression that you have a lot of hidden fees. Make clients know that changes have to be done and be clear in the beginning who will do the changes, is it the client? Their 3rd party designer/developer? Or you/your SEO company?

3. Keywords should be on the page
Some clients want to rank for a keywords that are not even on their pages, and sometimes even worse is aside from that is they do not have much words on the page at all. Sure GoogleBombs exist, but GoogleBombing is getting harder and harder to do it not impossible as their algorithm is getting better all the time. Tell the clients if you want to rank for it, talk about it on your web pages. If not, it will be very difficult to rank well for the keyword.

4. Be in the location you claim to be
I want to appear for searches in every city, on Google Maps! Google Maps results either within the maps itself, in Google One-Box or in Google Earth, all of these have address verifications. You have to verify you are there, aside from that, ranking within the maps results improve with citations from other websites mentioning your name/company name in the same address.

5. Your cannot just get links anywhere
Some clients specifically tell you where to get links, buying them etc. Some will go out themselves signing guestbooks and placing blog comments and creating forum post. Relevancy and trust are key elements. A good product or service with good content, making these popular, creating a buzz, making people talk about you is still one of the best ways to get links. If there is nothing to talk about by the mainstream online public, this does not mean SEO is impossible, but the client should be aware link building is not as easy as it sounds. It is really easy to get tons of links, but it is not easy to get links that make a significant effect on ranking.

CREDIT: What SEO Clients Must Understand

Video Cheat Sheet in SEO

Video Cheat Sheet

Optimize the raw file before upload with the same catchy yet keyword rich title you plan on giving it for life. Flip to your title and may trigger related videos from keywords in the file name.

Title, Description & Keyword Tags - Create a catchy title and description and choose your keyword tags. Make sure your desired keywords are present in all three.

Description Link - You have the option to place an active link in the description. Take advantage of it! Just make sure http:// is there.

Choose Your Thumbnail – Videos gives you an option for the thumbnail users will see in the SERPs.

Select Your Category - internet, education, entertainment, how to & style, etc.

Channel & Watch Page Views - Share in other social channels. Engage your community and seek to build it! Feature the video on your channel page.

Advertise in Promoted Videos, Facebook, Stumble Upon and much more Try TUBE MOGUL to upload in several video portals

Engagement (Comments, Thumbs Up/Down, Favorites) - The easiest way to boost engagement is to actually be a part of the community. Give and you shall receive. Remember, users must be logged in to their account in order to engage with posted content.

A user who finds your video from a Facebook embed will be less likely to comment, rate or favorite your video than a logged in user who found your video in. One last tip: always allow comments. If you’re concerned of what users will say, set the video to allow comments after approval.

Annotations – If you have several videos, use annotations to link them together. Use annotations for calls to action as well.

Links & Embeds – A diverse set of links and embeds: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Vimeo, Website, Blogs, etc. You never know– any given account user could also be a very active member of a forum that could potentially drive tens of thousands of views to your video.

Subscribers – Users often subscribe to Video users who regularly post content and are active in the community. There are benefits to having both types of connections.

Widgets - Use Widgets like Wibiya, Meebo & others to share video via social Networks

SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools

If you’re an SEO beginner, Google Webmaster Tools (also known as GWT, if my fingers get lazy) is a great place to start a site tuneup. If you’re buried in SEO minutiae and need to pull together some intelligent, actionable to-do items for your site, you could do a lot worse than signing in at Google.com/webmasters/tools. Here’s my quick guide to an SEO checkup, GWT-style:

1. Go Looking For Trouble

First, fix what’s broke. Use the Crawl Errors report as a great way to get a head start.

Click Diagnostics::Crawl Errors. This report will show all of the broken links Googlebot found in its last crawl of your site. It may also show ‘soft’ 404 errors – broken links that don’t deliver a proper 404 code – and pages where your server said “nope, I’m not responding. Phhbbbtttt.”

Fix the broken links wherever possible. If you can’t fix ‘em, build pages at the broken link destinations or use 301 redirects to reroute visitors.

2. Find Duplicates Duplicates

Haha. Get it? Duplicates twice… it’s funny… sniff. I crack myself up.

Duplicate content is a long-standing SEO bugaboo. Use the HTML Suggestions report to help diagnose duplication problems.

Click Diagnostics::HTML suggestions. Then click duplicate meta descriptions or duplicate title tags. The report you see shows you pages that have identical description or title tags:

This report can give you great insight into duplicate content. Where there’s duplicate metadata, there may be duplicate pages. For example, I clicked one of the pages listed and found this:

The ?param=hello is creating a duplicate of my home page.

Even if you don’t find a single duplicate page, it’s important that you have unique, descriptive title tags and compelling description meta tags for each page. So combing through the HTML suggestions report is always helpful.

3. Find Crawl Depth Problems

In a perfect world, you want Google to crawl 100% of your site’s visible pages. Use the crawl stats report to see how close you’re getting to this ideal.

Now, click Diagnostics::Crawl stats. Google gives you a succinct report showing you how many pages Googlebot’s crawling per day, the number of kilobytes downloaded, and the average time spent downloading each page:

Ideally, you want to minimize time spent and kilobytes downloaded per day, and maximize pages crawled per day. But what really matters is trending.

If pages crawled per day decreases, but time spent downloading a page increases, check your site for performance problems. Poorly-compressed images, bloated code and server problems are a few issues that could be hurting Google’s ability to crawl your site.

CREDIT: 9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools