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HP can spam the hell out of Google and Google engineers are afraid to do anything about it because they do not want to lose the associated AdWords ad budget. But if you follow HP's strategy it is called spam - and a Google engineer will smile while killing your site. It's just business.

his post is a follow up to my creating and managing your link campaign article. These are not techniques for gaining natural links rather they are methods of contacting other sites about your business and getting them to link to you - without initially coming right out and asking for a link. It occurred to me to add a few links to actual places where you can get free .edu links, however I did that before over at seomoz and the free sources are now useless due to being spammed.

One of the basics of customer-centric, persuasive copywriting is using "you" and "you're" rather than "I," "our" and "we." People are self-centered and respond better when you make your site all about them. This goes for all touch points in your marketing - including your welcome emails.

We don't do a lot of posts on branding on Get Elastic, but I had to blog about Seattle-based ski, snowboard and wakeboard shop evogear. evo is an example of a retailer that has taken its corporate culture and incorporated its personality into nearly every aspect of its marketing.

We all want to know which sites, search engines and keywords are sending us traffic. But what about direct type in traffic? When people access your site URL by typing it in from memory, it can be a great indicator of your brand preference, success of your offline and online marketing efforts and customer satisfaction. If you're smart and lucky, you named your site your main-keyword-dot-com and you get search traffic from visitors who use their address bars as search engines. For example, a search on "reusable bags" sends you automatically to "reusablebags.com" which sells…you got it, reusable bags.

What are FUDDs? We're not talking about wabbit-hunters or the beer of choice in Shelbyville. FUDDs are fears, uncertainties, doubts and deal breakers that influence consumers' purchase decisions. How you address them can have a huge impact on your conversion rates. PayPal and ComScore recently conducted a study on shopping cart abandonment and discovered customers' top reasons were

Facebook recenly released a guidebook for businesses titled: Facebook Insider's Guide to Viral Marketing. Don't get too excited about the title, just because you set up a Fan Page for your business and buy a few social ads does not mean you'll unleash a profit-virus, or even make a ripple in the pond. But the guide does help you understand what Facebook has made available for you and how to get a Page all set up.

Trust in word-of-mouth recommendations is at an all-time high. Public relations firm Edleman says in its 2008 Trust Barometer study that "a person like me" is still the most trusted source for information about a company and its services or products.

Salesmanship is about transferring confidence, and you can't inspire confidence without first establishing your credibility. So when it comes to Landing Page copy, credibility is truly Job #1.Here are five must-haves for building that credibility where it often counts the most:

Hanging out at SES Chicago last week, I spent some time with Stewart Quealy, VP of content development for SES, who told me that he enjoyed my last column about the power of a great unique value proposition. He suggested that as more new faces begin to adopt conversion rate optimization, some may not be as familiar with the fundamentals as many of us are. And of course, the end of the year is always a good time to talk the fundamentals. This week, I want to discuss another conversion rate optimization basic: the call to action (CTA).

A few days ago, I wrote about the power of the word "New" to get our attention - if there's a more potent attractor out there, it's almost certainly "FREE!" For years, advertising gurus have listed "free" on every compilation of powerful headline words. Now, research conducted by Dan Ariely (a Duke behavioral economist, previously at MIT) shows us that "free" is far more effective than "almost free." Indeed, a preference for "free" seems to be another feature hardwired into our brains.

Picking up where we left off in the Marketing Experiments Conversion Sequence C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) -2a, the last couple posts covered "m" for Motivation discussing optimizing your ecommerce sites for "hunters" on home pages and search and navigation. Today I want to look at motivation from a different angle. I want you to choose a landing page that is top priority for you to optimize. For example, your most profitable product with the highest abandonment rate. I want to get you thinking about which customer motivations are most likely to match your business, your products, your typical customer and your landing page presentation.

In both Decoy Marketing and More Decoys: Compromise Marketing, I wrote about how adding an item to a lineup of products could increase sales. In the former, the "decoy" was a product that was less attractive than another product but priced the same, or almost the same. This caused sales of the more attractive product to jump, perhaps because it looked all that much better by comparison to the similarly priced but less attractive product. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have used brain scans to show that it's easier for people to make a decision when a third product option is present vs. choosing between just two possibilities.

To follow up our recent post on customer motivation and optimizing your website for hunters (e.g. moms armed with Christmas lists), I want to show you some examples beyond the search box and navigation menu. I'll use a personal story - I'm in the market for a car GPS. Previously knowing nothing about them (features, brands, prices etc), so I started off a howser. I decided I want to check Crutchfield (great product filters and product descriptions), Amazon (access to more products, the seller marketplace and more customer reviews) and Best Buy Canada (Canadian pricing, option to pick up in store).

It is greatly ironic that algorithms, the quintessential example of all that is not human, would be so fundamental to social media. Last week I wrote a post about how Google gathers user data. This week I continue by exposing how popular social media websites use algorithms to utilize user data. Although humans power social media, it is algorithms that provide the frameworks that make user input useful. As proven by the countless social sites online, finding the correct mix of participation and rules can be extremely difficult. Below are some of the algorithms that when combined with the right people have proven successful.

While most of Radically Transparent is about managing and monitoring your online reputation, we spend a lot of time explaining that customers are discussing your brand and would love to have you join the conversation. New research from ExpoTV.com shows just how badly your customers want to hear from you.

Yesterday we looked at examples of image zoom and alternate views, which can help customers experience the product better than one small view. A good photographer plus AJAX or Flash technology like Scene 7 or Magic Zoom can achieve this. But online retailers can go a step further and use photos that show products in use, or "in context." This can reduce a shopper's fears, uncertainties and doubts about a purchase like "how does this look on a person?" or "how large is this in real life?." Images can also "sell" by triggering an emotion, showing the quality or versatility of an item or illustrating a products features and benefits.

Although there are many forms of Web Monetization (I've listed out nearly 15 forms), the newest iteration of web marketing: widgets, haven't yet fully cashed in. Widget, Gadgets, Applications, Canvas Pages, Embeds, it goes on and one. One thing is clear, the rate of widgets continues to increase, take for example Facebook's application platform has over 15,000, 20,000 applications in just about 9 months. Granted, many of those are slightly tweaked clones of each other, the top 100 widgets clearly has adoption. In some cases, there are sophisticated companies developing widgets, the RockYou's and Slides of the world can really zero in and focus, or take the garage developers such as the two Russian developers who created Scrabulouos, or lastly, the big corporations or interactive firms that are getting in on the action -often with limited success. Yet, how do we monetize widgets? There's only a few ways, some tied back to traditional methods, and some leaning on the new media.

A new study by Canadian research firm Pollara has surfaced data indicating that Malcolm Gladwell's popular theory about key influencers moving markets may not be valid. Gladwell's arguments in the 2000 book The Tipping Point had reached levels of cliche approaching The Wisdom of Crowds, in large part because of its seductiveness to marketers.

This post is a recap of today's webinar: The eCommerce Platform of the Future. The on-demand version will be available shortly. About our guest speaker As Senior Analyst for ecommerce technology at Forrester, Brian researches and reports the impact of technology advancements, operational needs, and changing consumer behaviors on online retail. His expertise spans B2B and B2C retail and online travel, with a focus on multichannel strategies, user experience design and technology. Brian holds more than 11 years of experience in eCommerce and online marketing, serving senior roles for retailers such as Amazon.com; Classmates Online, Inc.; Eddie Bauer; Expedia.com; and The Spiegel Group.