Blogs and Bling Bling: Companies See More Sales, Improve Search Position
Article by Christopher Heine
Published: September 27, 2005
The search engines are all about blogs, but turning that traffic into a selling vehicle is another story.
Not so for eHobbies.com, which says it has watched its conversion rate double from the normal 2 percent to 4 percent whenever site users visit one of its blogs. Since adding blogging to its site in May, 5 percent of the company’s overall traffic comes from its main blog destination, www.ehobbies.blogs.com. In addition, 5 percent of all orders have recently tracked to a blog-based coupon.
New Google Talk Offers Instant Messaging & Voice Chat
Sourced from SearchDay
As widely expected , Google waded into the instant messaging space today with the debut of Google Talk , an IM client that also offers the ability to make voice calls between computers.
What If Everyone Was a Blogger?
THE NEW YORK TIMES CAUGHT my eye last week with its short August 5 editorial, “Measuring the Blogosphere.” Pegged to Technorati’s recent “State of the Blogosphere” report – which said 80,000 new blogs are created every day, with some 14.2 million in existence already — the editorial essentially conceded the arrival of blogging.
Feeds: A New Channel for Search Marketing
Sourced From SearchDay
Savvy search marketers are taking advantage of an increasingly popular technology to attract traffic: RSS feeds that get picked up virtually instantaneously as they are published by specialised webfeed search engines.
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies 2005 Conference, February 28 – March 3, 2005, New York, NY.
Google Launches Personalised Home Page
Sourced From SearchDay
Google has unveiled a new service that allows people to consolidate various Google features they use, ranging from web search to email, into a personalised home page.
The new personalised home page service will no doubt make many people scream “Portal!” That’s because despite the name, it is essentially a “My Google” feature, similar to the My Yahoo, My MSN and other My Whatever pages that portals created so their users could access the many features they offer.
Don’t Disable Your Site for Handicapped Users
Sourced From SearchDay
Are you designing web sites that are accessible to disabled users? If not, you’re overlooking a powerful market segment of millions of searchers and potential buyers.
Many search marketers meet the prospect of being forced to design accessible web sites with cries of unfairness or indifference. But this is a shortsighted view. Assistive technology is increasingly used to help the more than 1.3 million legally blind Americans and 10 million visually impaired users successfully navigate the web.
Ad Execs Are Upping Online Ad Budgets
Sourced From eMarketerOnline ads are winning more ad spending dollars, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
On the heels of last week’s IAB 2004 online advertising numbers, which showed that US online advertising grew 32.5% in 2004, followed by eMarketer’s prediction that online advertising will rise by nearly 34% in 2005 to about US$13 billion, Forrester upped the ante, estimating that total US online advertising and marketing spending this year will reach US$14.7 billion.
Worthless Shady Criminals: A Defense Of SEO
Sourced from SearchDay
Worthless. Shady. Criminals. That’s how we’re being described. Those characterizing search engine optimization this way are unfairly defining an entire industry, often ignorant of SEO issues, definitely stereotyping and shortsighted in not realizing the value SEO offers to every site.