Even if you do perform frequent check-ups on your Web site, are you sure you're giving it a really thorough once-over? About once a month, you should "pop the hood" to perform a comprehensive check-up, find what's not working and fix it. Here's what you should be looking for. More 
How to Measure Your Web Presence
from bMighty
Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Flickr and Twitter are the most popular forms of social media today, giving members easy ways to connect with each other and stay updated based on their affinities and professional activities. But the activity taking place in social media is hard to measure, and there are still no clear standards on how to evaluate it before visitors show up on your doorstep, so to speak. Better ways of measuring social media through Web analytics and search marketing are raising the bar on the quality of information small and midsize businesses can collect--and what they can do with it. More
Top Signs Your Site Isn't Ready for Prime Time
from Search Engine Watch
Many things have changed in the last few years, but the real foundation for search engine optimization (SEO) success hasn't changed much at all. Yeah, we should always find ways to add fresh content to our Web site, optimize all digital assets that we have, but the real SEO basics are still often overlooked or not understood by many. More
Changing Roles Within Direct Marketing
from MediaPost Publications
There are currently two big shifts going on in the direct marketing world that affect e-mail marketers: the decline of direct mail and the rise of social media. More
How to Avoid SEO Failure
from iMediaConnection
While SEO is one of the best ways to drive quality traffic to your site, it's also deceptively labor intensive. Precious human resources -- both internal and external -- go into building and maintaining high-quality best practices, and SEO practitioners all say that ranking high in the right search categories is the responsibility of everyone on your team. The author asked several SEO experts to give their quick, easy tips for spot-checking SEO. More
Six Steps to an Effective Blog Guest Post
from Daily Blog Tips
There is no denying the power of a sound guest post execution. Benefits can include a flood of traffic to your site, increased reputation, high ranked links pointing back to your site, and improved relations with the site you are guest posting on. With so much on the line, it makes sense to do a little bit of work before creating and submitting your guest post. More
The Five Newest Interactive Trends: How Will They Affect You?
from iMedia Communications
One of the byproducts of this fast-paced environment of change is the excitement of uncertainty that each day brings. Just a couple of years ago, the speed of news was dependent on the rate at which someone could blog or a news outlet could publish a report online. Now, news is broadcast instantly via Twitter and the vast array of social networks. More
Survey Says: Social Networks Should Push the Envelope with Ads
from Mashable
A new study suggests that users really wouldn’t mind if ads became more targeted to their interests. The study, conducted by Q Interactive, concluded that the majority (53 percent) of Web users would view an advertiser favorably if ads were targeted to their interests. Moreover, only 5.6 percent of them said they’d view the advertiser unfavorably, with the rest falling in the "undecided" camp. More
FTC Plans to Monitor Blogs for Claims, Payments
from The Associated Press
Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon. What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all. The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. More
Has e-mail marketing gotten to a point where we have nothing new to talk about? Has this industry matured enough that we now just need to focus on the tried-and-true acquire, convert, retain principals? The e-mail marketing industry could never land in this type of rut. Here's a list of some newer aspects of e-mail you should be aware of. If you haven't considered these as part of your strategy, what are you waiting for? More 
