Twitter recently unveiled updates to its services and policies, and, included on the list is a new commitment to supporting the Do Not Track browser setting, which stops the collection of information used for tailored suggestions.

While Twitter has taken this step, others haven’t. Users can make use of the setting as much as they want, but, unless the company harvesting the data chooses to honor the setting, the data mining continues.

But, Twitter is serious about privacy. Here is what they said in their official announcement:

“… (W)e’ve made a number of updates to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Here are some of the main changes to our Privacy Policy, with links for more information:

“– We’ve provided more details about the information we collect and how we use it to deliver our services and to improve Twitter. One example: our new tailored suggestions feature, which is based on your recent visits to websites that integrate Twitter buttons or widgets, is an experiment that we’re beginning to roll out to some users in a number of countries. …

“– We’ve noted the many ways you can set your preferences to limit, modify or remove the information we collect. For example, we now support the Do Not Track (DNT) browser setting, which stops the collection of information used for tailored suggestions.

“– We’ve clarified the limited circumstances in which your information may be shared with others (for example, when you’ve given us permission to do so, or when the data itself is not private or personal). Importantly, our privacy policy is not intended to limit your rights to object to a third party’s request for your information.

“In our Terms of Service, we’ve clarified how your relationship with Twitter works and made a number of small changes and formatting improvements, such as new headings for easy reference and updated descriptions of our services.”

So, Twitter understands that “no means no,” and has put it in writing and told the world, more than 140 characters at a time.

The question becomes, how many other major and minor players will follow Twitter’s noble lead?

This also raises questions for those designing SEO strategies. Will the future be more difficult in a world where open access to everyone and everything may be going away? The answer to that is a firm “yes,” but with qualifications.

Isn’t it better to live in a world where privacy is respected and marketers and SEO designers just have to be more clever than a world where anything anyone does is trackable? Cop shows on television and cops in the movies may play for great dramatic effect when chasing the bad guys and mining various data fields to save the child or the world. But, in the real world, an Internet world with unprotected privacy leads to an unhappy place with unpleasant exposure to so many things it boggles the mind. The respect of privacy is always paramount.

GM today isn’t quite so revered, but it’s still an industrial and financial powerhouse. And, GM (GM) flexed its considerable public muscles recently by announcing it would no longer be advertising on Facebook, and not buy any national advertising during the 2013 Super Bowl telecast.

All of this happened just before Facebook (FB) became a pubic company – and promptly fell to the whims of the stock market, losing considerable value in the few first days of trading.

Ah, it has been discovered, Facebook is run by humans, warts and all.

The siren song of Facebook has been its 900 million users and their stats which go along with them, often including age, gender, name, sometimes an address, and what can be harvested from what they eat, what they like, etc.

At first advertisers thought if they were somebody, they were on Facebook. Certainly, the vast reservoir of names and data would be a gold mine; the price of admission, paying for advertising on Facebook would produce a bonanza of results.

Well, not so much.

Web Marketing Pros owner Peter Roesler said, “I agree with GM’s decision, and have tested Facebook pay per click with several different markets, and the conversions to cost are horrible. Sometimes, none at all. The biggest problem with Facebook advertising is if you leave the Facebook page to click to another site, people freak out and close the browser like it’s spam. The only way to have a successful Facebook campaign is using your Facebook page, but with the new timeline, the landing pages can’t be made good enough to work properly. Therefore, I think advertising dollars are best spent elsewhere on either Google Adwords or Bing/Yahoo Adcenter.

So, the dropping stock price is not the only problem Facebook is having right now.

While Facebook may be “the new, best thing” in the eyes of many, too many advertising fundamentals have been overlooked regarding Facebook.

First, forget about the 900 million Facebook users around the world. That is an aggregate number, and includes all of the people who created a Facebook page and haven’t been back to look at it in months or years. Then, there is the next level, who visit Facebook occasionally just to see what is on their newsfeed and wall, then immediately leave.

Once you pare away all of the casual users, one-time visitors, and get down to the core of it all, there just may not be that many desirable Facebook users in any particular country – remember, Facebook is global. If you’re selling tractors in Alabama, do you really care about Facebook users in Finland?

The bottom line is, Facebook is the advertising darling of the moment, and not the global solution to those who wish to have a serious advertising campaign with a set of projected results. Facebook will be around for a long time, but, now that the IPO is out of the way and the bloom is off the rose, it will become just another vehicle for a targeted audience, not a flood of eager buyers waiting to buy anything offered on Facebook.

1. Use Google’s Website Optimizer
   Google’s website optimizer is a free tool that allows you to increase your conversions by testing different layouts, wording and landing pages.  Wording makes a big deal with conversions and the wording can make or break a site.  A great example is recently one of our clients had the wording BUY NOW on all of his products on his eCommerce website.  By simply changing BUY NOW to ADD TO CART his sales increased by 10%.  Sounds crazy right? Think about it, you  are a shopping online, you like the product, but don’t want to commit to buying it right now, therefore you want to add to cart.  Another example for lead generation would be figuring out the easiest way for someone to give you their info.  Get a FREE NO Obligation quote in minutes is a great call to action or CONTACT US for more information – don’t worry we won’t try to sell you anything works much better than either  Get a Free Analysis (sounds very involved) or Get a Quote – could mean annoying sales calls.  Also be very clear on describing what they are getting, don’t tell them they will get a free report and then not actually have a report.
2. Track Your Conversions
   I am always surprised by how few people do this.  Tracking your conversions is very easy and can be done using Google Analytics.   You can use this data to push more marketing dollars at what works. Whether it’s PPC, Organic SEO, referral websites, banner ads or email marketing.  Tracking the conversions will allow you to specifically target the marketing that works.
3. Talk Your Customers
   You customers will tell you what to do if you listen.  Ask them what they liked about your website, ask if they had trouble finding anything, were they impressed.  Your customers can help you fill in the holes on your website.
4. Exploit Your Competition
   Let’s face it, where there is a McDonalds, there is a Burger King.  McDonalds did all of the market research and Burger King followed.  Look at your competitors websites, look at their ads, landing pages, marketing.  Learn from them.  Test different aspects of what they do and find ways to improve it.  After all that kind of information is priceless to your business. Both compete.com and Spyfu are good ways to get an idea what your competitors are doing online, however, I strongly suggest visiting the leaders in your industry and see what they are doing.
5. Use the Bottom of Your Web Pages as One Last Sell Point
   I hate scrolling to the bottom of a website and not having anything to do, I would guess that 90% or more of the websites I visit are loaded with dead spots.  The bottom of your website is a great place to put your phone number, another lead capture form, a back to top link and / or a link to get to another page.  You most likely have sold them on your services if they got to the bottom of the page, why not capitalize on it.

In conclusion, knowledge is power.  Finding out what doesn’t work is more important than finding out what does.  If you really want your website to excel spend some time improving your website users experience and make sure they can quickly get to the information they want.  After all it’s not really your website, it’s their website.  Once you accept that you can significantly boost your leads and sales.

Paralyzed with fear of this development?

Don’t be; you merely have to change the way you’re doing search engine optimization, and the changeover isn’t a tough one. Google’s recent release of the Panda and Penguin updates shook up the world of low quality back links and effected a large chunk of websites that were completely dependent on Google rankings for success.  If your website was effected here’s information on how to recover from the Penguin and Panda updates.

First, the new results are going to be data rich, so it boils down to “data in – data out.”

When creating SEO programs, start adding more data for Google to latch on to. And, consider in the middle of all of this, you now have to consider the types of web sites you’re working for – beyond desktop sites, don’t forget smartphone-exclusive sites, and domain and task models such as Siri. You’ve got to start thinking more globally, and anticipating more who will be searching. The SEO world today goes beyond end users sitting at a desktop or laptop dancing across the Internet; now with smartphone (and, older feature phones which are still prevalent in the marketplace) services being accessed anywhere from a bus bench to a hot dog stand or the top of a mountain, tens of millions of new users are searching for the data you’re presenting, and hoping to generate revenue from ultimately.

Are you presenting data in such a way it can easily be found and have an impact on your SEO program – and, even more importantly – your site revenues?

Think of some of the basics to get you started; take a page from news journalists who answer basic questions in every properly written news story: who, what, why, when, where, and how. That’s the type of information Google search is now going to be providing; help things along and provide that for Google as part of your SEO programs. Don’t forget things like events, specific products, brands, geographic locations – any detail which will help pull more information together.

What are the numbers?

Google may have made things a bit difficult for SEO professionals, but consider this report: billions of clicks are made for searches on Google. That’s a huge number. An additional 300 million search clicks are landing on Wikipedia every month – not year, but month. That’s three billion, six hundred million searches a year on Wikipedia looking for and finding information; none of which generate any revenue for anyone. A search click is a terrible thing to waste, especially when they add up in the billions.