Why Pinterest Better Be in Your 2012 Internet Marketing Strategy

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Social Media Marketing
• Comments: 0

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If you’re a business owner or Internet marketer that hasn’t heard of Pinterest by now, let me clue you in a bit. According to the über popular Pinterest.com, “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”

But Pinterest.com is far more than a “Virtual Pinboard.”

We’ve been keeping a close eye on Pinterest over the last year and can say with confidence that it’s something every brand and Internet marketing professional should master. In fact, the numbers alone should give you an idea of its impact since its March 2010 launch!

How to Rank for Google Base Shopping Results

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Google, Search Engine Optimization
• Comments: 3

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The whole purpose of search engine optimization is to increase traffic, and of course we know that top rankings in Google results produce more traffic. But how many of us, when searching for a product online, end up in Google’s “Shopping” results?

Often times, especially when your search query includes the word “buy,” the Shopping results for “motocross helmet” (for example) will show up in Google’s main Web search result, which conveniently allows shoppers to view a large selection of the product they want from various websites.

What you Need to Know About the New Twitter

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Social Media Marketing, Twitter
• Comments: 0

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On September 14, 2010, Twitter unveiled the new and improved Twitter.com interface. But why the change? Well, according to Twitter, the new interface is “faster, easier to use, and richer.” But more obviously, Twitter has approximately 160 million users, and only a fraction of that number actually use the web interface itself. Instead, many rely on other Twitter clients like Tweetie or TweetDeck. The redesign’s purpose is all about keeping users on the Twitter.com site for longer, and by refocusing on a more entertaining user experience they can accomplish just that.

Similar to how Facebook went a little ‘Twitter-esque’ last year with its News Feed, now Twitter has integrated some of the more multimedia aspects of Facebook. The first thing you will notice about the new Twitter design is its expanded two-columns of information. The column on the left will still contain tweets, while the right side column now offers additional information about those tweets as well as embedded videos, photos, and user information.

Are Twitter Followers Better than Facebook Likes?

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Social Media Marketing
• Comments: 4

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Social media marketers have long recognized (in social networking terms) that social friends and followers are more inclined to recommend and purchase from brands they are fans of. But with the premise that social networking sites are the place to be, we now consider which of the top sites are most effective for turning a fan or follower into a customer.

A recent eMarketer study compared the influence of customer loyalty between Facebook and Twitter. The study was based on a series of previous findings about motivations for “liking” or “following” a brand, as well as different patterns of engagement, and reports the social media benefits of Twitter to produce a more profitable ROI. 

With the appeal of staying up to date and in the know about all the latest happenings of a brand, Twitter attracts an audience much more receptive to marketing messages than with Facebook. The study reported that 37% of participants were more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter. Only 17% agreed that “liking” a brand on Facebook would make them more likely to become a customer.

How to Optimize your URL Structure for Search

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Search Engine Optimization
• Comments: 0

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Of course it is usually best to keep your URL stable and unchanged once it is created, but sometimes change is necessary when not properly optimized in the initial setup. Improving your site’s URLs to be more SEO- and user-friendly can greatly benefit search engine ranking and click-through rates, but be careful—if done improperly, you may face a significant decrease in ranking that could take a long time to recover from. Here, are some search engine optimization tips for URL optimization, as well as what to look out for and avoid.

Dynamic vs. Static URL

The first step is to consider changing your URL structure from dynamic to static. URLs with characters like “=”, “&” and “?” are not only difficult to read for search engines (leading to indexing problems), but also for users who are more likely to follow a link indicating what content the URL leads to.

Why do NoFollow Links Matter to SEO?

• By: Sheena Schleicher
• Categories: Search Engine Optimization
• Comments: 0

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Why Implement NoFollow Links?

1. The popular search engine optimization nofollow HTML attribute is the solution to what many believed to be a huge problem in the blogging community. In early 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts and blogger Jason Shellen designed the rel=“nofollow” attribute to assume the responsibility of stopping spammy blog comments made primarily to boost the link popularity of the person leaving the comment.

Here’s how it works: by adding rel=“nofollow” to a hyperlink, a page signals that the hyperlink’s destination should not be ranked by search engines. The search engines see the nofollow tag in an HTML link but do not follow it, nor do they allocate link popularity to the destination page. Though many squabble about its effectiveness at stopping comment spam, the idea is that spammers will stop posting if the search engines stop giving page ranking credit.