Digital PR and SEO
from Online Marketing Blog
You’d be hard pressed to find any modern public relations agency practice that isn’t researching or already implementing a digital PR strategy including search engine optimization, blogging/blogger relations and social media. The winds of change are here and many Public Relations practitioners are scrambling to adjust to the opportunities presented by shifts in both consumer and journalist behavior online. More

Do You Have a Reputation for Search Failure?
from iCrossing
To a good extent, you can’t control what other people write online about you or your company. But as recent news illustrates, you can take some simple precautions to at least mitigate negative search effects. It starts with focusing on the proactive steps that can help prevent bad news from being highly visible in natural search queries for your brand name or important personnel. More

10 Tips for Scrutinizing Paid Search Agencies
from iMedia Connection
As search engine marketing becomes more ingrained as part of the media mix, the debate over whether to handle paid media campaigns in-house or outsource to an agency continues to rage. Any number of factors can motivate marketers to go the latter route. Issues surrounding scale and efficiency often drive brands to seek outside help, and in many cases, marketers prefer to entrust their campaign to a specialist, much as they do with other aspects of their marketing communications. More

A Good E-mail Marketing Program Costs Money
from ClickZ
How do e-mail marketers move beyond "fire and forget" marketing? While marketers agree that more targeted, timely, and relevant e-mail communications are better received and increase response, basic economics is a major barrier to progress. E-mail marketing is so cheap that every campaign delivers ROI -- even totally untargeted campaigns. Wonder why spammers still spam? They make money doing it. More

Getting Shoppers from Search to Store
from AdvertisingAge
What's the difference between national and local advertising? Draw two columns on a piece of paper, and you can probably list quite a few differences. But online they start to disappear. Sure, the original assumption about how the internet would affect brands -- that e-commerce would triumph over traditional retailing -- hasn't exactly panned out. But don't let the failure of e-commerce to replace local bricks-and-mortar shops obscure a more important trend: the impact of the Internet on in-store sales. More

15 Features Your Site Doesn't Need
from Conversation Marketing
The worst mistake in internet marketing? Making things too complicated. It pumps up costs, slows site launches and keeps you offline when you could be online, selling stuff. Who makes that mistake? You do. When you insist that that one feature is so important you can't live without it, you're killing yourself. If you can get 90 percent of the function with 10 percent of the effort, shouldn't you? So, here's a list of features your site can probably do without, at least for now. More

Rocket Skates or Running Shoes, Just Make It Interesting
from StraightUp Search
Sometimes writing website content on a subject you a) know little about or b) have limited experience with is like willing yourself to teleport to France - you can sit there and try for a few hours, but you'll end up sweaty and frustrated and feeling like a big idiot when you stop. Here are a few things to remember for your next copywriting assignment to help avoid the urge to smash your keyboard to pieces. More

Preferring the Web Over Watching TV
from The New York Times
Parents who worry that their children watch too much television can take heart: a bigger concern may be children spending too much time online. For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television. More

U.S. on Track to Top Mobile Web Market, Study Says
from AdWeek
After years of lagging behind European countries, the U.S. is poised to take the top spot for mobile Web usage by month's end, according to data collected by technology firm Bango, which provides mobile Internet access platforms to 100,000 Web sites worldwide. More