PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine weighs in on Google’s YouTube dilemma. Whereas AdWords and AdSense “are both simple, easily automated, and can scale to just about infinity,” Fine points out that ads on YouTube cannot be automated as easily. And while just about anyone can afford to create and run an AdWords campaign without a salesforce, YouTube ads cost more and usually require the use of an ad agency, thus limiting its customer pool to larger advertisers.

Fine says there’s now a greater feeling of urgency inside the Googleplex that the online video giant needs to start contributing to the company’s bottom line. But Tim Armstrong, Google’s top U.S. ad-sales executive, says the company made huge strides at YouTube in the last quarter. “It takes longer to bring in a YouTube dollar than it does to bring in a search dollar,” Armstrong says. “Can you make [that process] more efficient? We think ‘yes’…we’re making nice progress.”

The need for automation is a big problem, says Dave Morgan, founder of the ad network Tacoda (now owned by AOL). He points out that display ads are the most successful ad format for video, but these still require a human sales force. Meanwhile, YouTube execs point out that one of their key new ad formats, the overlay-which places ads over a portion of clips without disrupting the video-has been available for less than a year. In the end, Fine finds few answers to his question of whether YouTube can grow to AdSense-like proportions.

San Jose Mercury News
The “R” word may be looming over America’s economy, but Internet commerce continues to grow apace, and Google’s chief economist and several analysts, speaking at a forum on the state of the Web economy, believe it will continue to defy broader economic trends. During the conference, Ed Garrubbo, chairman of the Electronic Retailing Association, reported that while the overall economy tanked, online sales jumped 17% in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, e-commerce has grown 22% in the past two years.

“The lesson here is that the economic slowdown is not an Internet slowdown,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. “The Internet is looking pretty strong compared to other sectors.” Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech think tank, predicted that e-commerce would continue to grow as high-speed connections proliferate and e-commerce technologies improve. “The absolute growth has been steady now for several years. The Internet economy is almost counter-recessional,” Atkinson said.

Garrubbo cited data from Forrester Research, which said that more than two thirds of all Internet users have bought products online; 53% of all computer and hardware sales take place online along with 30% of sales of toys, video products and auto parts. In fact, Garrubbo said that the looming recession may actually contribute to e-commerce growth.

E-Marketing Performance
A majority of e-commerce Web sites have secure domains or sections to help protect consumers while they’re making purchases (designated by the https: prefix as opposed to http:). While security is a must, these secure and non-secure site versions can cause duplicate content issues, so Stoney deGeyter offers tips for how to avoid them.

DeGeyter suggests that the problem typically arises when consumers enter secure mode by adding items to their shopping cart–and then continue browsing, viewing all ensuing content under the https: domain. The fix for this is simple.

“There is no reason to go secure just by adding products to a cart,” he says. “The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button.” And if they leave the checkout process to continue shopping, they need to automatically be placed back onto non-secure pages.

“When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same unsecure page, then likely the search engines can as well,” deGeyter says. “This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version.” He recommends using absolute URLs for all navigation and product pages to avoid having multiple versions.

Search Engine Journal
Can Google analyze and rank photos as it does with text? Two of the company’s scientists presented a paper at the International WWW Conference in Beijing last week that will allegedly remove Google’s dependence on the alt text accompanying a picture, allowing the engine to rank images based solely on their content.

The process, called VisualRank, uses an algorithm that combines image-recognition software with techniques for determining which images look most similar to one another, resulting in a ranking that doesn’t require text. If the process works, this could mean humans would no longer be required to provide metadata in order to describe photos to search engines.

TalentZoo.com
If you’ve got the right keywords and know where to put them, Jill Whalen has some tips for using that info to come up with effective, enticing title tags.

“You’ve got to take your few keyword phrases and arrange them in an order that provides you with the most benefit from search engines, while also appealing to your target audience within the search results pages,” Whalen says.

She suggests choosing three keyword phrases for each Title tag–perhaps one highly competitive term and two that are less so–since there’s only so much space available. You can supplement those chosen three with more diverse (but still targeted) keywords in the Meta description tags and in the pages’ copy itself.

Whalen also says that you should aim for a 10-12 word Title tag–so if you’re going to fit your three target phrases in there, then you’ll have to be judicious about the other words you choose. “It’s imperative to keep any jargon, superlatives or marketing fluff out of your Titles for this reason,” she says.

BusinessWeek
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said the company is prepared to walk away from its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, but BusinessWeek thinks Ballmer is bluffing. The business journal says Microsoft needs Yahoo, as first quarter results again exposed the persistent downward trend in the software giant’s online services division.

As Brent Thill, Citigroup’s director of software research says, “it wasn’t a spectacular quarter by any means,” especially in online services, where losses widened to $228 million. The division, which relies almost exclusively on online advertising, went a further $43 million into the red from a year ago, although revenues grew 43% to $843 million. Yahoo, meanwhile, reported first-quarter sales of $1.35 billion.

Ballmer said Yahoo’s results, which slightly beat analysts’ estimates, won’t cause Microsoft to raise its offer. But Microsoft has to make this deal soon-if it’s going to make it at all. As UBS analyst Heather Bellini wrote in a research note, “Microsoft must get this acquisition right to remain relevant in the Internet age,” because as Thill says, “There’s still a runaway train they’re trying to catch (Google). And (Microsoft and Yahoo) are two little trains trying to hook up.”

Search Engine People
So you’ve succeeded in getting your client to blog. And now page views and comments are up, the content is having a great impact on overall SEO–but the client wants to know how the blog can actually impact sales. Jennifer Osborne has been in the same situation, and she offers some tips for converting those readers into buyers.

The blog has to represent a company’s authority or industry expertise if readers are going to trust it enough to pull out their credit cards. “Use your blog to develop a specialty in a particular niche of your industry,” Osborne says.

Blog conversions are also driven by keeping readers in the loop. Tell them where they can find similar content, or a more detailed analysis, or even a video or product demo. “Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to,” Osborne says. “Link it to the next step. This will substantially increase your opportunity to convert.”

adCenter Community
“Every analytic solution can generate a perfect storm of data that obliterates the horizon in innumerable details.” So says Charles Thrasher, media specialist and project lead for adCenter. And he offers a thorough overview of how to best determine which metrics should be used as key performance indicators (KPIs) for your Web site.

Thrasher borrows from the Jason Burby and Shane Atchinson’s book “Actionable Web Analytics” to suggest some KPIs for a commercial site–metrics that are typically tied to revenue. Think about using stats like overall conversion rate, average order size and the Web site’s effect on offline sales as possible KPIs.

Meanwhile, for sites where commerce isn’t the primary focus, Thrasher borrows from “Web Analytics An Hour a Day” by Avinash Kaushik and suggests using visitor loyalty, recency, length of visit and depth of visit as your primary KPIs.

WebProNews
Once the initial tasks of on-page optimization are done, the “heavy lifting” phase of SEO takes a back seat to rankings maintenance. And as Jim Hedger notes, sustaining strong organic rankings isn’t rocket science, but it is hard work. So he serves up a roadmap for maintaining top organic placement in the long run.

“Barring unforeseen circumstances and assuming best practices have been followed all the way through, the majority of a search marketer’s working time is likely spent on continuing to update the blog, link building and social media marketing,” Hedger says.

In addition to content development, sustainable rankings are also tied to analytics programs and the data they provide. Everything from eye-tracking studies, to city-specific local search results, to multivariate tests can be used to refine copy and streamline usability. “Examining the data shows search marketers which pages or files are working and which require improvement,” Hedger says.

The benefits of trying to maintain rankings go beyond increased traffic, however–as Hedger notes that search marketers can use the same analytics to improve conversions as well.

SEO Smarty
A logo serves two key purposes for a company–to help establish brand identity, and to give a visual representation of the company’s products or services. Ann Smarty reviews a number of search firms’ logos to see how well their logos match up with these tasks–with a focus on how they actually describe SEO with their graphic.

For example, SEO Design Solutions uses an arrow that shoots in from the left up through the middle of their logo, which Smarty interprets as showing the growth aspect of SEO (be it growth in rankings or profits). A nice touch, but she recommends having the arrow come in from the right, to make it “more understandable [to U.S. and European people who are believed to think (as well as read) from left to right.”

Search Engine People’s logo highlights the uniqueness aspect of SEO (the service makes you stand out in the rankings) by showing one silver sphere in the midst of a number of blue ones. Meanwhile, Advance Rankings showcases the quality of its services by placing a star within its logo, and Search Engine Journal (along with Smarty herself) uses a magnifying glass in the logo–a nod to the high level of professionalism or expertise it provides.