peasap / Foter / CC BY

For a few years now, Google has been more than hinting at the fact that site latency (how fast your site/pages load) is going to have an impact on your visibility. Why? Well, for one, users are tired of waiting. Over a decade ago waiting three minutes for a page to load was acceptable but these days anything more than 3 seconds can cost you valuable visibility and loss of visits. Users don’t want to wait for pages on your site or elements on your site pages to load and neither to search engines.

New Tool: PageSpeed Insights
A few weeks ago Google launched PageSpeed Insights. We are ecstatic about this new tool since we have been pulling from various tools ourselves for creating site assessments and while we believe this doesn’t necessarily cover everything, it does help in prioritizing and figuring out how to make your site faster – and for that- we give three cheers.

We love that these tools make our job easier and faster so we can do more for our clients.

Find out how to make your site faster here.

After that, call us for a full Technical and Marketing Site Assessment to get your site in tip top shape.

William Hook / Foter

Internet technologies are constantly changing and your audience’s habits and sophistication are too. Over 50% of Facebook users access their site via mobile and we are seeing an increase in mobile use to small and medium sized businesses websites. So, we are here to help with your mobile presence. We have been searching for some simple, quick and easy solutions for our clients to take advantage of enhancing their mobile presence and we’ve discovered a few cool tools so it doesn’t become another item that keeps getting pushed down on your to-do list.

There are many free tools out there to create your own mobile friendly website. In many cases, you don’t need a full mobile version of your site but simply a mobile friendly version. Either way, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you can do it in less than 10 minutes. Are you ready? On your mark…get set…go…

Google and duda mobile have teamed up to help businesses build a mobile site. In just five easy steps you can have your own mobile site for your company – and you can customize it too.

Follow These Steps to Make Your Mobile Website
1. From your computer, go to: http://www.howtogomo.com/en/d/get-started/build-your-site/
2. Enter your website address
3. Customize it (edit extraneous copy!)
4. Change your index file to detect and redirect smartphone users
5. Go live. (It is free for a year, just enough time to learn and measure performance).

We did it! Visit our mobile friendly site today from your smartphone at
http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/libertyinteractivemarketing

Take a few extra steps to further optimize your customer’s mobile experience with your organization and enhance interaction and engagement:

Hubspot’s put together a guide on the first three steps to making your website optimized for mobile, it’s worth the read.

Create an “Add to Desktop” bubble on your mobile site home screen

Create a Custom Apple Desktop Icon:
Dave Taylor has put together a simple and easy to follow tutorial on creating a desktop icon that iPhone and iPad users can add to their phones.

For WordPress Sites – Add this plugin for an instantly mobile friendly site
Add the “WPTouch” plugin to your WordPress site
(view http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog on an iphone and you can see how it transforms it for mobile devices).

10 Great Tools to Create A Mobile Version of Your Site

Other great mobile site references and stats:
Smartphones Beat Computers For Facebookers Time On Site
Why Mobile Optimization Matters: 6 Best Practices for Mobile Design

Many of you in the professional SEM world probably spend as much time as I do optimizing paid search campaigns, testing keywords and ads, and generally rolling around in all the data we have at our fingertips. As a firm believer in the mantra “test, measure, repeat” I was a bit peeved when I noticed that Google had changed the options for ad delivery in AdWords. My beloved “Rotate evenly” was replaced with “Rotate evenly: Show ads more evenly for 30 days, then optimize for clicks”. This small change has effectively removed our ability to do any longer term creative or other A/B testing.

The Real Issue
Some campaigns/adgroups don’t necessarily have enough traffic to do a legitimate test in 30 days. And even if there is enough traffic and conversion data to draw some meaningful conclusions, I never want my ads optimized for clicks. Google gets paid for the click, I don’t. What’s more is there is no obvious way to reset it for another 30 days. Selecting another option, saving, then re-selecting 30 days does no good.

After searching for an option on the Internet, I finally ended up calling Google directly. It seemed that the representative had no understanding of why this seemingly innocuous change was a very big issue for the advertiser. After a round of questions and answers with the rep, the issue was escalated. There was some lack of clarity on what the rotation rules applied to and didn’t. Here is the information I received back from Google:

1. The ad rotation 30-day clock applies to the Ad Group level, not the Campaign, even though it is a Campaign-level setting.
2. Modifying ads, adding them to the Ad Group, or even pausing and un-pausing will restart the 30-day clock.

An Annoying Dance
So, anyway you slice it, if you want to continue rotating your ads, you have some extra hoops to jump through. Keep in mind that any change to an ad does reset the metrics for that ad, so that one can be counter-productive. So that leaves us with the pause-unpause dance.

The Suggested Workaround

• Set up an extra ad in each of your ad groups to use as a ‘switch’ you can flick to reset the clock at any time.
• Use an identical headline or other element so you can easily sort it out using AdWords Editor.
• Then you just unpause, post, pause post. This will reset your 30-day clock on all Ad Groups and leave all the metrics on your “real” ads intact.

I know it sucks, but it is what we have until Google gives us our tool back. I would love it if someone came up with a better alternative, so if you have, please share it with the rest of us.

———————————– UPDATE ————————————————-

As of June 1, 2012 the power of the people has influenced Google to reconsider this change. A word from Google:

“Also, in response to your feedback, we’re planning to make two changes to the setting. First, we’ll expand the even rotation period from 30 days to 90 days to give you a longer window for testing new ads. Second, if you still wish to have your ads rotate evenly indefinitely, we’re going to offer an opt-out of this change. You can opt-out by filling in your information on this form or by contacting your account representative. Both of these changes will go into effect on June 11, 2012.

If we see a large amount of demand for the opt-out over the next few weeks, we’ll also offer the opt-out in the AdWords interface directly.”

Read the reasons as to why they made this update in the first place on Google’s Adwords blog.

Three big items were announced this week from Facebook, bringing further opportunities for businesses.

1) Timelines for brand pages

With Timelines added to new brand pages a whole new world is open to exposing audiences and fans to your brand and allows brands to be more effective at conveying their identity on Facebook’s platform.

When you visit a brand Page in Timeline layout, the experience becomes more personal. A prominently displayed section on the landing page shows how many of your friends like the brand, as well as your friends’ public mentions of related topics.

“The goal is to make Pages more engaging and more social,” said Gokul Rajaram, Facebook’s product director for ads.

Page administrators have new options at their fingers too. An admin panel hides or expands on command, meaning you don’t have to navigate to a separate page to make changes, updates or improvements. The panel includes notifications of activity on your Page and chart-based performance data. Best of all, you can now respond directly to private messages without added hassles or obstacles, a feature also directly accessible from the admin panel. – Sam Laird, Mashable

2) Real-time Insights and other new metrics

Pages Insights now shows your last 500 posts (going back to last July) and tallies the total number of engaged users, People Talking About it and virality. The latter measures the percentage of users who commented on the post, though sentiment isn’t taken into account. - Todd Wasserman, Mashable

For marketers, this is a new way to understand how competitors are performing on Facebook. Businesses can use that information to establish benchmarks for their own efforts. Most marketers have little to compare their Facebook growth and engagement to. For a long time, the only way to know how companies were doing on the social network was to look at total Likes. This became a skewed metric as more pages began to buy fans and launch programs that inflated their numbers but didn’t result in lasting engagement. With more public insights, it will be harder for companies to appear more successful than they truly are. – Brendan Irvine-Broque, Inside Facebook

3) New ad formats and applications

An article on The Australian said Facebook has invited marketers and journalists to New York to discuss new, potentially lucrative advertising opportunities designed to lure its 845 million-strong user base.

It is expected Facebook will try to integrate ads into people’s experience, so that friends’ posts about brands are showing up alongside their news links and puppy photos.

“Facebook is making serious money from ads right now, but they are not making serious money from major brand advertisers, and that’s where the ad money is,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group.

On Mashable, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, told Bloomberg that Facebook still has to win over much of Corporate America. “It really comes down to brand advertisers,” she said. “They just need to do a better job of convincing the big advertisers that ads are effective and that they perform.”

Additionally, an article in Internet Retailer mentioned that the social network announced it is adding its Sponsored Stories ad format to Facebook’s mobile application and also adding those types of ads to the Facebook log-out screen. Sponsored Stories enable advertisers to highlight posts or actions, such as when a consumer’s Facebook friend Likes a product, checks into a store, plays a game or uses a Facebook application. The move marks the first time mobile users will see ads on the social network.

Facebook is also adding back the free Offers program, which enables merchants to offer discounts via their Facebook pages.

Consumers will initially see about one Sponsored Story a day, Facebook says. “We want to make sure that over time the marketing messages are as good as the content that you see from your friends and family,” said Caroline Everson, vice president, global marketing solutions.

We think Groupon has done some pretty stupid things, but we also think they’ve done some pretty smart things too. For instance, this year they are offering Groupon Gift Cards which we believe is an absolutely brilliant idea and we are not ashamed to say buy them from us.

Purchase is available now:
Click on the banner below or follow this link to purchase Groupon Gift Cards.

One of the things we look at during our Search Marketing Site Assessments for clients, is the use of 404 pages no matter what industry you are in. We always recommend having a custom 404 page. A 404 page is when a user discovers a “page not found” on your site.

How does this happen and why should you care?
Well, it may seem like a completely elementary thing to put in place however if someone comes to your site from another site (i.e. they linked to your site – maybe a blog post or old web page). If there is not an appropriate redirect process in place the user will be sent to a “page not found” or 404 error. You have control over what gets displayed on this page and if it is a generic 404 (no branding just black and white) it can mean losing a visitor forever or you could help them discover the appropriate page they were looking for, thus keeping them on your site. Think of it providing a bit of customer service to your visitor – if they entered through the wrong door, you would want to show them the appropriate one or guide them to the location they were looking for.

While creativity and humor might get you far with anyone, it also helps to be…well, helpful. If your page is useful in guiding the user to the area or page they were looking for then you are more likely to create a better customer experience.

A few suggestions for your 404 error page:
- At the minimum have your logo and main navigation on the page, better yet use a page template from your site that will help customize it to your look and feel
- Have a link to your home page or better yet a listing of links to popular sections on your site. You may also want to provide a link to the sitemap and promote it as a “full directory of site pages.”

Here are a few examples of 404 pages that we think work while also maintaining the brand personality:

Thanks to fab404.com for some great examples – check out others to for more ideas.
P.S. We’ve got some work to do ourselves. Do as we say not as we do .

If you are a GoDaddy customer you will want to read this.

Part of our weekly SEO routine for clients is to check search engine Webmaster tool accounts, in doing so we usually find something interesting, disturbing or exciting. This week, we noticed that a domain that we permanently redirected to a new one back in December was showing as a top inbound linking site to the domain in which is was supposed to be redirected.

We asked ourselves, “How could this be?” Was the site moved to a new host without our knowledge? Was the domain being redirected properly?

And so our investigation began.

Our Findings:
This client is a GoDaddy customer and back in December we had permanently forwarded the domains in GoDaddy’s Domain Control panel which at that time issued a proper permanent redirect telling the servers and search engines that this was indeed a permanent redirect (otherwise known as a 301 redirect).

Today, when we checked the server headers it said that the redirect was a temporary redirect (otherwise known as a 302 redirect). We went a step further to investigate some of the other domains that also had been setup as permanent redirects in the GoDaddy system. And to our dismay, they are all showing as temporary redirects.

We logged into GoDaddy to make sure the permanent redirect settings were correct for our domains AND…they were.

We then called GoDaddy to understand why the domain settings marked to permanent redirect (301) were showing as a temporary redirect (302) in our third party checking tool.

The GoDaddy tech support person told us that “all of their forwarding now only issues a temporary 302 redirect” and if we wanted “to make it a permanent 301 we would have to do that at the hosting level.” They also could not tell us what type of redirect would be issued if we actually selected temporary redirect as an option or why there are two choices if they both do the same thing.

There are three situations for when you would use redirects:*

1. If you are launching a new site and switching to a new domain.
2. If you have deleted, removed, changed or are planning to change web page URLs.
3. If you have a list of URLs that are derivations or misspellings of your company name/main site domain that you want to forward to your main site.

*Redirects can be configured for site domains and specific web pages/URLs.

There are two types of preferred redirects for these situations:

a) 301 which is for files that have been permanently moved.
b) 302 which is for files that have been temporarily moved.

Why are redirects such a big deal?

In the SEO world, redirects affect everything. A redirect tells servers, search engines and browsers how to handle the domain when someone requests it. If a page is deleted, a site is relaunched, or a page is renamed it is important for both SEO and usability to make sure you have those old pages going to either a new relevant page or appropriate URL.

If URLs/domains are not configured properly you can lose valuable search engine visibility. Keep in mind that people and sites are linking to your content and inbound links are one of the key influencing factors to search engine rankings. Use of 301 redirects should be used to preserve search engine rankings and any inbound links to that particular URL. This way search engines will index the new address instead of keeping the outdated URL. It is the best option to avoid negatively impacting search engine ranking.

The reason you don’t want to use a 302 redirect is this signals to the search engine that the old URL should be maintained in the index as an active URL, it just has been moved for now. This causes none of your new URLs to be indexed.

If a search engine doesn’t know where to go and runs into a dead-end URL/page this can impact your search visibility not to mention your user experience if they follow a link to a URL that no longer exists.

How do I fix my forwarding domains in GoDaddy to be properly configured for permanent redirection?

Note: If you are redirecting a domain, you DON’T want to just switch the DNS to your main site – this will cause a mirrored site and create a duplicate content issue for you. Search engines will not like that and you may get penalized for it by search engines.

1. The first step is to remove or turn off the forwarding in your GoDaddy domain control panel. Go to Domain Management and find the domain, and go to Forwarding and click on Manage next to it. Edit to turn off.

   

2. If the web site you are redirecting to is hosted with GoDaddy, add the domain as an additional domain to the root through the Hosting Control panel.
3. If the web site you are redirecting to is NOT hosted with GoDaddy, change the DNS records in the Domain Control panel to point to the IP address of the site you are redirecting to. Add the domain as an additional domain in your host’s control panel. Or your virtual hosts file.
4. Add the following code to the .htaccess file for the main site. Make sure to create a RewriteCond and ReWriteRule line for each domain you are redirecting. Make sure to redirect both the www and non-www version of the domain if needed. And always immediately test your .htaccess to make sure there are no errors. .htaccess can be tricky, better to be safe than sorry. So always backup your .htaccess before making any changes.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^newdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,r=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]

It is wise to speak with an SEO consultant prior to making your site live to the redirects of old pages and domains are appropriately handled. If you are relaunching a site or looking to increase your online visibility? Give us a call regarding your SEO.


]]> http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/oh-no-daddy-godaddy-botched-their-301-redirection-now-what/feed/ 2 http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/oh-no-daddy-godaddy-botched-their-301-redirection-now-what/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/libertyinteractive/~3/vOMyyvFTpsQ/ http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/sending-a-successful-email-marketing-campaign-closing-the-gap-between-desktop-mobile-and-web/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:58:33 +0000 Liberty Tsighis http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/?p=1328
6. Tweet

Email marketing seems simple, and for the most part it is. Yet, many companies and clients create their emails and fail to browser test or email client test to make sure their emails are rendering consistently across these platforms. This results in an oblivious and convoluted customer experience that leaves the customer asking “Why does this email look like this?” Delete. Mark as spam.

Email service providers are no cake walk either. Many of the most popular ones with large marketing budgets to acquire customers fail to meet best practices when it comes to delivery.

Sending a successful email marketing campaign relies on 3 things:
1. Clean HTML code that renders consistently across the major email clients
2. A reputable email service provider like Campaign Monitor, ExactTarget
3. A solid testing plan cross-browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) and email client (Outlook, Yahoo!, Gmail,Hotmail) Each has its own quirks to deal with.

To help create a successful email campaign, Campaign Monitor published a guide that allows email marketers to see the various elements that affect how emails are rendered across 24 email clients. They learned that support for even simple CSS varies considerably between clients, and even different versions of the same client.

Download your copy and view the comparison table here. It covers 24 different email clients and all the popular applications across desktop, web and mobile email.

Thank you Campaign Monitor!

Note: Outlook (27% of total market share) and iOS Devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) (16% of total market share) are the most popular email clients.


]]> http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/sending-a-successful-email-marketing-campaign-closing-the-gap-between-desktop-mobile-and-web/feed/ 1 http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/sending-a-successful-email-marketing-campaign-closing-the-gap-between-desktop-mobile-and-web/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/libertyinteractive/~3/830FPNPShGY/ http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/internet-marketing-jobs-phoenix/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:11:47 +0000 Liberty Tsighis http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/?p=1307
11. Tweet

In the last few weeks, I have seen and heard from several agencies and companies in the Phoenix area looking for online/web/Internet talent. I am so excited to see so many job openings come available that I wanted to put together a quick post on a few of the open positions in hope of referring great talent to the Phoenix area or at least diversifying the current pool.

Cole Capital is looking for a Marketing Manager eBusiness
view job posting

Thunderbird School of Global Management is looking for an Online Marketing Specialist
view job posting (pdf)

Terralever is looking for A LOT of folks from developers to designers to account, sales, and admins
view job postings

Off Madison Ave & Mighty Interactive are looking for a PPC Manager
view job posting and other open positions

Sitewire is looking for an Account Manager
Position is very recently available, no posting on the Sitewire site as of yet but we do have the job description (pdf).

RIESTER is looking for an Integration Manager
view job posting


]]> http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/internet-marketing-jobs-phoenix/feed/ 0 http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/internet-marketing-jobs-phoenix/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/libertyinteractive/~3/MuHeyJriMwU/ http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/ways-to-get-your-google-places-page-to-rank-higher/#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:13:26 +0000 Katie S. http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/?p=1236
16. Tweet

Whether it’s your own company or a client’s business, having a Google Places page is key to visibility within Google. In 2009, Google was in the deal room with Yelp to purchase the local review site but the deal fell through. A few months ago, Google revealed their own “Yelp-like” product, Hotpot. Google is making a big push into the local market with plenty of attention going to location-based applications (such as Foursquare, Facebook Places) it is important that you are maximizing on your own visibility within the most popular search engine especially now that Google is placing more of an emphasis on local results and blending them with organic search results.

We recently had a chance to hear local search guru, David Mihm discuss the ins and outs of local search that are useful for organizations of any size.

Here are 6 Ways To Get Your Google Places Page to Rank Higher:

1. Claim your listing if you haven’t. How can you tell if it is claimed? Complete a search in Google Maps, that is the easiest and quickest way to locate your listing. Look in the upper right corner about a quarter of the way down the page (see image below). If your place exists and is not claimed, go through the steps to claim and verify it – then read the rest of this post .
   
2. Reviews are more important thank you think(we’ll keep hitting you over the head with this one over and over). Reviews are one of the key factors that can help your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) as well as the local listing results that show up within the SERP.

   Tip: Put together a strategy to get a steady flow of reviews coming in monthly rather than a bunch all at once and then nothing at all. Google likes to see consistency. One way to do this is through your social media outlets. Another thing to do is if you use Groupon or any coupon sites try to capture the emails of those who purchased and follow up with them to have them write a review of their experience. Of course we’d all like positive reviews, but as long as you have a good product and good service you should receive good reviews.

3. When claiming your business make sure your title is representative of your business- do not stuff it with keywords. You want to use descriptive words. You might be able to get away with one or two keywords depending on your company, but remember the algorithm Google uses for local results is not the same as the one used for organic results.
4. YouTube video’s may help your rank so if you have them add them to your local listing. Also fill it with images. Tip: To optimize your videos add a caption file to your videos, title and description.
5. Use the maximum number of description categories available (currently 4), use one default category and then create custom categories for the remaining fields. When creating a custom category try using the statement “my business is a [fill in the blank]” as your format. Do not put any geographical terms in as a category- that’s a big no-no.
6. Multiple branches and/or specialty divisions with the same address should have individual pages. If your business is a large business with multiple branches or specialties all at the same address and there are more areas than categories, don’t worry you can list them separately. For example, if your business is a hospital with different specialty areas – each one of those specialties can have its own Google Places page as long as each area has a different phone number they can and should be created and listed individually.

A big thanks to David Mihm for his support and sharing this great information with us.


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