Internet marketing teams may benefit from new features being added to Yahoo! Web Analytics that allow them to track visitors to their websites.
In a post on the Yahoo! Store Blog, Jennifer Farwell from Yahoo! Small Business said several improvements have been made to the reporting interface.
In addition, there are also some new demographics and interest groups reports, segmentation and filters, she added.
For example, companies can learn more about who is visiting their site with a new age report which breaks down the age of visitors to their site in different categories.
Similarly, the gender report allows them to find out whether more males or females are clicking through from their pay per click marketing campaigns, while the interest categories report lets firms see what their main interests are.
"This information can help you with demographic targeting of Yahoo! search marketing campaigns on search or content networks and of AdWords campaigns on content networks," Ms Farwell stated.
A recent study by Guava and Econsultancy reveals that 45 per cent of companies said they intend to spend more on pay per click marketing this year.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
The popularity of online video is continuing to grow, with viewing up 11 per cent in the United States in March compared to the previous month.
Online video has been presenting opportunities for internet marketing teams for some time and the research, from comScore, suggests that these opportunities could become increasingly lucrative.
It shows that US viewers watched 14.5 billion online videos in March – with the average person watching 5.5 hours worth of content.
Google sites, including YouTube, accounted for 41 per cent of the online video market, while Fox Interactive Media was second in the list with a three per cent market share.
Other video websites appearing in the top ten were Hulu, Yahoo! sites, Microsoft sites and Viacom Digital.
Research carried out in the UK by Hitwise last month revealed that the number of people visiting online video sites had risen by 41 per cent over the last year.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Limited time promotions are seen as the best approach for internet marketing campaigns in the current economic climate.
According to a new survey by MarketingSherpa, some 71 per cent of consumer product marketers use limited time and limited inventory promotions.
Of these, 43 per cent claim they are very effective and 49 per cent believe they are somewhat effective.
Another internet marketing tactic being used by companies is customer reviews and ratings, which is cited as very effective by 30 per cent of those employing it.
Loyalty programmes, product videos on websites and offers such as free gift wrapping, speciality boxes and personalised notes are also being adopted.
"Price will always be a major factor in the buying process, but the increasingly interconnected world of consumer and business shopper is evolving," MarketingSherpa states.
In a recent blog post, Nielsen Online analyst Charlie Buchwalter predicted that spending on internet marketing will continue to grow as user engagement with the web increases.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
It is easy to get so lost in trying to optimise for the search engines that you lose sight of who will actually visit your site, react to your calls to action, and purchase your products or complete an action which you would like your website visitors to take eg sign up to a newsletter, give feedback, download a white paper, and so on.
Whilst no longer as important as they were in the search engine algorithms previously, making items on the page stand out and be easy to read for your visitors is a must to ensure that your core messages are communicated quickly and clearly. As far as the search engines go, Yahoo still gives more weight to the bold, italic, heading tags etc than the other majors, so they should not be ignored for SEO purposes.
Developing concepts or themes for a page, or coming up with metaphors to enable the site visitor to comprehend the purpose and navigation of your website, can be effectively delivered by using:
The reader journey through your site, as well as within a page on the site, is vitally important in leading the visitor to the information they seek and which you wish them to discover. Creating a simple reader journey can be hindered by cluttered pages, lengthy sentences, complex navigation, and a lack of prominence to the important words.
The reader journey is the path you wish for a visitor to take to your calls to action. This may be within a website or it can be within a single page, and many experiments have been carried out with eyetracking to discover just how we react to website content and the layout, images, fonts etc used.
The search engines also use the HTML tags (Eg H1, B, I, LI etc) to discover which keywords and phrases are those which the site owner or designer has deemed to require prominence and to stand out as important for the visitor. These factors do still figure in the search engine algorithms, as we have stated previously, but there are now so many different, and potentially more important factors which affect how the search engines deliver relevant results, they no longer carry the weight they used to.
However, omitting these tags because other factors may carry more weight ignores the concept of how the alogirthms work and it is better to include as many factors, used appropriately, on your website than to stop using the less effective tags at all. Particularly when the tags actually make a visit to your website more enjoyable and rewarding for the user.
Using the tags for prominence, as well as some of the tricks of the trade from the print and publishing industry, will mean that your website visitor can find the content they desire and the search engines will also regard appropriate use of such elements favourably for search engine optimisation, and hence ranking.
Companies investing in search engine optimisation (SEO) could improve their success by developing a linkbaiting strategy, according to one expert.
Writing on the Econsultancy blog, editor in chief Chris Lake explained that linkbaiting can boost search rankings by attracting inbound links.
He said it also focuses the minds of internet marketing teams and prompts them to think about what constitutes engaging content.
"Everyone involved in SEO (and marketing, and content creation) should constantly be thinking about new opportunities for linkbait which will work best in their marketplace," Mr Lake remarked.
He said linkbait often consists of content that will be useful to the target audience, such as informative articles, free tools and lists of links.
It may also come in the form of how to guides, viral marketing, reviews and comparisons and blogs.
Research carried out recently by Guava and Econsultancy revealed that 55 per cent of firms plan to increase their spending on SEO this year.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Travel companies investing in internet marketing may wish to focus their attention on social media sites, as young people are increasingly using them to swap information about holidays.
According to STA Travel, social networkers are logging onto sites like Facebook and discussing their holiday plans with their peers, which is encouraging many people to visit more unusual destinations.
A spokesperson for the organisation said: "Online social networks encourage an exchange of ideas about places to go to and what to do there."
For travel companies, this means that investing in banner campaigns or viral ads on social media sites could have a positive impact on the number of people visiting their website or even or their sales.
According to a recent report by STA Travel, travellers are increasingly seeking out holiday destinations that are off the beaten track in order to broadcast their experiences and display their photos on social networking sites.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Companies investing in mobile internet marketing may be interested in a new report from comScore which lists the most popular mobile web pages visited by European consumers.
It points out that there is an age and gender difference when it comes to the top sites, with older consumers more likely to visit those offering banking and stock trading services or weather and traffic information.
Meanwhile, younger mobile web users are more interested in social networking sites and entertainment and also access mobile internet content more often than their older counterparts.
Alistair Hill, an analyst at comScore, said: "Mobile offers attractive opportunities for advertisers to target audiences based on the type of content consumed and device owned."
Web search was the second most popular activity, after social networking, for those in the 13 to 17, 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 age groups and the most popular for 35 to 44-year olds and 45 to 54-year olds.
Meanwhile, Opera Mini has reported that mobile web usage via its browser has risen by 157 per cent in the last year.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Companies looking to launch internet marketing campaigns aimed at female audiences may be interested in the findings of a new study by researchers at Southern Illinois University.
It reveals that women prefer to use websites that are easy to use and easy to navigate – something that is not as important to their male counterparts, Website Optimization reports.
Meanwhile, men place more emphasis on download speed than female web users.
The researchers suggest that the way in which men and women use the internet can explain the gender differences.
For example, women tend to use the web to develop relationships, while men tend to use it to gather information.
Companies may wish to take note of these findings when choosing where to place their internet marketing ads or when designing their own websites, depending on which audiences they are trying to reach.
A new report from comScore has also identified some key differences in the types of websites visited most often by mobile internet users.
It revealed that while younger consumers prefer to visit social networking sites, their older counterparts prefer websites offering banking service and weather and traffic information.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Now, this is one cool tool. Keotag allows you to search a large variety of search engines, social bookmark sites and blogs for keyword tags.
There is no way to begin to say how many uses this can be put to – you just have to try it yourself!
The furore around Phorm continues. This time, it is the release of emails, requested under the Freedom of Information Act by a member of the public, between the Home Office and Phorm that are causing the bother.
The BBC report shows that the Home Office were in contact with Phorm back in 2007, endeavouring to discover the nature of the technology and
exchanges were about helping the department understand “public safety considerations and legal obligations” about behavioural advertising in general.
For any in the UK internet marketing industry who have been considering behavioural advertising, the fact that the EC started legal proceedings against Britain just a fortnight ago about the interpretration of EU laws on confidentiality of communications shoule be borne in mind.
Whilst behavioural advertising may have benefits for commercial entities and consumers alike in delivering targeted advertising rather than inundating consumers with irrelevant advertising, there has to be care taken over how it is a) implemented and b) perceived from now on.
On the second point, the PR damage done to those companies who stated they planned to use the technology is quite considerable, although when as a company you have approx 28% of UK broadband market share, the dissenters and damage may seem trifling. For smaller companies, it could cause a major problem.
We have by no means seen the last of the Phorm debacle yet, although it is highly likely that behavioural advertising will be adopted at some point in the future, as other companies are also launching their own versions and behavioural guidelines have been issued which come into force in Sept 2009 in the UK.
