Web Strategy

Great points to focus on conversion rates rather than traffic.

The most important point every online business needs to know is this: Conversions (how many people take the desired action - whether that is completing a purchase, gaining potential leads, or increasing a subscriber base) are more important by far than increasing traffic.

Quit treating your website like a brochure! You can communicate to your visitors with video, audio, written word, and even in a conversational manner through blogs and discussion forums. If you have the option of communicating so clearly to your visitors … why aren't you?

Sideline, announced on the Yahoo user interface blog, is a desktop application that displays real-time mentions of specific keywords, brands, or names. It is capable of custom search groups, advanced queries, and refreshes the application with new mentions automatically. How does it do this? It pulls keyword mentions from Twitter, of course!

There are three basic rules that you need to follow to have a successful Web presence: 1. Brand matters. 2. Usability matters. 3. Search engine optimization matters.

With communities in the driver seat over product, a shift will happen as communities can define the spec of future products and therefore multiple brands will bid for their business. As a result, we should expect the agency model to flip over, where PR agencies start to represent communities of customers -rather than brands.

Great tips on Local SEO for niche and small biz. Good copy goes a long way for local SEO but so are inbound links...

I know this Local SEO guides have been written many times by others, so I'll try to cover it well enough so readers don't feel the need to read more Local SEO tips and waste more time.

Use your advertising to start conversations, create content that builds trust and community and you'll harness the ever effective power of advertising for generating leads and sales, you know, until the next new thing comes along.

Great list of resources to learn Google Analytics - from beginners to experts

Great way of turning advertising copy into a great content strategy...

This spot is such good advertising, it's become… content. Which connected a couple of dots for me.

Google will begin showing ads on Wednesday to people based on their previous online activities in a form of advertising known as behavioral targeting, which has been embraced by most of its competitors but has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.

Great tips on developing an organic SEO strategy - aka the BEST SEO STRATEGY

When you set out to build your site content, keyword research and educated guesses about keyword relevance are often necessary initial steps.

Jeb makes a great case for developing a web strategy for your business - and provides a seven step strategic plan that should work for you. I'm glad he mentioned something we are always preaching - "Analytics or Tweak and Repeat". Once you implement your strategy you should always be tracking it and honing it.

Is your business struggling to survive in the current economic environment? Are you seeing your cash reserves dwindle as new business drys up? Even if you are doing well I have the same advice- Use the web to save and grow your business.

Principles of building communities online.

Barry makes two great points in this post you should look at if you are looking to develop a web strategy for your business.. He makes two great points that are very important for businesses to realize when crafting a social media or community building strategy. If you can engage an audience around your brand by providing them content where and how they want it - you will succeed online and see real conversions - whether it is leads or sales.

With more and more people flocking to social media sites, it is important that your audience can engage with your brand through as many channels as possible.

We are always talking about building a community. It's the first thing we recommend for many reasons... This is a good overview on how to find, build, and grow your online community

In social media, who you know - or who knows you - can certainly make all the difference. That's why figuring out who to connect with and taking the time to build relationships with these people is key to leveraging the power of social media.

Great overview on what a Content Strategy is and all it entails

What is Content Strategy? Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. Necessarily, the content strategist must work to define not only which content will be published, but why we're publishing it in the first place. Otherwise, content strategy isn't strategy at all: it's just a glorified production line for content nobody really needs or wants. (See: your company's CMS.) Content strategy is also-surprise-a key deliverable for which the content strategist is responsible. Its development is necessarily preceded by a detailed audit and analysis of existing content-a critically important process that's often glossed over or even skipped by project teams.

1. Linking Out Encourages Participation 2. Linking Out Incentivizes Linking In 3. Search Engines Likely Reward It 4. It Makes Your Site More Valuable 5. Linking Out Sends Trackable Traffic

A couple insights to future Google additions to their ranking algorithm: brands as noise filters and relationship awareness. Exciting stuff....

If you ask Matt Cutts what big SEO changes are coming up he will tell you "make great content" and so on...never wanting to reveal the weaknesses of their search algorithms. Eric Schmidt, on the other hand, is frequently talking to media and investors with intent of pushing Google's agendas and all the exciting stuff that is coming out. In the last 6 months Mr. Schmidt has made a couple quotes that smart SEOs should incorporate into their optimization strategies - one on brands [15], and another on word relationships [16

This post is part of a series examining some oft-neglected online customer touch points and exploring ways to optimize them. Today, I'll look at a type of page very similar to thank you pages - the logout confirmation, or logout thank you page.

Great point - Every touch point matters.. Use your logout/login/thank you/subscribe pages for good. Use them as content outposts. Use them to upsell. Use them to pull people back into your site