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The major takeaways from Google Panda and update (in no particular order) are as follows: Focus on original content – you will get hammered for “stealing” or repurposing on too high a scale (for example, lifting content from Wikipedia) Over-optimization kills – Google can sniff out sites that are designed solely to exploit certain key words (for example, repeating the same keyword, or variations thereof to drive traffic) Link to high quality/authoritative sites – while Panda focused more on a more systematic sweep of SEO, Penguin is focused on the processes around linking. Don’t over-link, and when you do create links, link to high quality sources Excessive Ads are Bad – If it looks like you are running too many ads against your content, you will face the consequences SEO is a “Bad Word” – The rise of the term “content marketing” effectively means that high quality content trumps low quality link bait.

Write Guest Blog Posts for Authoritative SitesContent marketing does not just refer to content you write for your own site, but content you write for other sites.

content marketing also improves SEO rankings and traffic.  Link building is a common SEO strategy that is always difficult to grow through a paid channel.  The best way to get organic and quality links is by creating interesting content that drives people to link and share your content.  Whether or not it’s directly related to your line of business, driving free traffic is always a victory.

Since a user’s first awareness of a product depends on an external trigger, such as a call-to-action in an email, a link on a social media site, paid advertising, or a word-of-mouth recommendation, the message must be consistent. “People need to talk about your product the same way, each and every time,” Elman says.

To be most effective, the articulation of what the product is for should connect to when the product should be used. In other words, inception is about attaching your product to a moment in the user’s life.

The best triggers are those that attach to frequent behaviors. Attaching a new action to a current behavior is much easier than attempting to create a new set of actions from thin air. Habits are like the layers of a pearl. The grain of sand at the center is the pre-existing behavior, which provides the base for new routines to attach to.

A new study by Facebook brings some big news that, curiously, at first blush might not seem like much news at all. It's this: If you want to create successful ads for the social network, just do the same thing you would do if you were advertising on TV. Or in magazines. Or on the radio.

"Marketers were asking us, 'Are the fundamentals of advertising on Facebook the same as the fundamentals elsewhere?'" Bruich says. The results of the study point to yes, he says, and that means "the experience they've built up over the years and the instincts they've had can be applied to making more successful ads on Facebook."

Bruich is presenting the results of the study in a paper called "What Traditional Principles Matter When Designing Social" at the Advertising Research Foundation's Audience Measurement 7.0

Despite the hoopla, wearable gadgets like wristwatches for checking your text messages or eyeglasses that capture video are unlikely to make a splash with consumers anytime soon, given the clumsy designs, high prices and technological constraints of many of the current offerings.That is the conclusion drawn by many industry executives and analysts who trolled the vast exhibition halls of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.Most of the wearable products on display at the industry's premier showcase looked like awkward attempts to shoehorn technology into new forms without an original or compelling benefit for the wearer, skeptics say.

"For wearables to finally match up with the hype, (they have) to be a true solution, where it isn't about the technology - it's about what the technology enables you to do, something you couldn't do before,"

The wearables mania gripping the industry is in part a response to slowing smartphone and tablet markets. After growing 39 percent in 2013, global smartphone shipments are forecast to expand by just 18 percent annually through 2017, with prices steadily falling, according to market research firm IDC. Tablet shipments are seen up 22 percent this year, compared with 54 percent in 2013.

We found that the call-to-action button didn’t necessarily hurt our cost-per conversion price but it also did not improve it, either.

“Facebook ads work because they are highly targeted to personal interests and demographics and they are injected directly into the reading experience for each person,” Kukral said. “Also, and most importantly, they aren’t designed to look like ads; but rather “updates”. Perhaps we’re finding out that adding the new call to action buttons tip the viewer off more quickly that they are viewing an advertisement, therein directly affecting the effectiveness of the ad itself. One thing is for sure; the only true way to know is to do proper testing and monitor the results over time.”

the partnership is a very public acknowledgement of the industry’s faith behind investing in a more visual, native approach to advertising in response to the emergence of the Visual Web.

While Instagram may have been one of the first to lay the groundwork for purely visual content, it is not alone. Every day, more publishers—including Time, Fox News and NBC News—are redesigning their sites in a visual-centric manner and de-emphasizing text. The escalating adoption of mobile has necessitated the change. Images are the way today’s tech-savvy consumers prefer to consume content.

Brands will now create and design ads with the clear objective of having this branded content be shared exponentially.

The average top 1,000 web page is 1575 KB.

Page growth is a major reason why we keep finding, quarter after quarter, that pages are getting slower. And faster networks are not a cure-all for the challenges of page bloat.

According to Akamai’s most recent quarterly State of the Internet report, the global average connection speed among the top 50 internet-using countries is 3.3 Mbps — a 5.2% increase over the previous quarter. But when we’re seeing year-over-year page growth ranging from 45-50%, it’s easy to see that the gap is widening.

A majority of Sweden’s advertisers now use some form of content marketing to enhance their brands

While 69% of those polled said they knew what content marketing was, nearly one-quarter (23%) said they had heard of it but didn’t know about it.

Among marketers who had content strategies, 80% said that form of marketing was at least somewhat effective at strengthening their brand, and a similar number said it nurtured existing customer relationships. More than half said it was effective for finding new customers. It was less good at generating direct sales, according to this sample.