The Week in Review

Mobile Payment Transaction Values: $172 Billion in 2012

Worldwide mobile payment transaction values will surpass $171.5 billion in 2012, according to Gartner. This would be a 61.9 percent increase from the $105.9 billion observed in 2011. (Gartner)

Google Unveils Penguin Update 1.1

Late Friday night, at the start of the long weekend, Google introduced the first update to its Web spam-fighting Penguin algorithm (i.e., Penguin 1.1). Matt Cutts referred to it as a “data refresh” affecting less than one-tenth of a percent of English-language searches. (Search Engine Land)

Google Squashed 134 Million ‘Bad’ Ads in 2011

Google killed 134 million bad ads in 2011, more than double the 56.7 million ads its denied in 2010. Human raters are one way Google checks how its system is doing. (ClickZ)

AdKeeper Expands to Email and Pinterest

AdKeeper launched last February as a service enabling users to save online ads. While the company maintains that people actually want to save ads, they’re not finding the traction they had hoped. In the meantime, AdKeeper is expanding into the realms of email and Pinterest. (GigaOM)

Top Reason for People Losing Interest in Emails: Too Frequent

According to Litmus, 54 percent of people unsubscribed from permission-based emails because the emails came too frequently. Meanwhile, 49 percent said they found the content to be repetitive or boring over time, and 47 percent said they received too many emails and decided to downsize. (HubSpot)

The Facebook Phone Is Coming

According to Facebook employees and engineers who have been sought out by recruiters at the social network, Facebook has plans to release its own smartphone by next year. Facebook has hired more than a half dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad. This would be Facebook’s third try at building a smartphone, but is this whole pursuit a big mistake? (NYTimes.com, GigaOM)

Concept Research vs. Keyword Research

A patent application from Bing titled “Concept Disambiguation via Search Engine Search Results” shows an intent to go beyond the use of knowledge bases to understanding just entities. “The end goal would be to create an ontology of concepts that could be used to identify concepts used in searches to determine which pages to show searchers, and in some cases to provide instant answers of the types mentioned above.” In order for a page to be identified as one that embodies a concept, it will have to address the concept in meaningful ways, possibly addressing related queries about the concept. This goes beyond just keyword terms and phrases appearing on the page. (SEO By The Sea)

5 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Advertising

Here are five quick and simple tips for better Facebook advertising effectiveness: 1) targeting, 2) refresh/rotate ads, 3) try different ads, 4) split-test ads and 5) point to your Facebook page. (iStrategy Blog)

Using Personification to Boost Your PPC Ad’s CTR

“When it comes to PPC ads, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, it’s useful to look at what’s already working in other channels and test to see if it would work for PPC ads as well.” Personification, or “ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects,” works well in mass-media advertising, sales letters and even poetry – why not PPC? Here’s one example that shows how personification boosted the CTR of one ad by 52 percent. (Search Engine Watch)

Facebook to Buy Face.com?

Facebook is rumored to be targeting facial-recognition technology company Face.com for an acquisition that could be pegged at $80 million-$100 million. The deal would make sense for Facebook, whose users could benefit form the technology to help identify people in photos faster. (The Next Web)

iAcquire Gets Banned From Google for Buying Links for Clients

iAcquire, a search marketing agency, was banned from Google’s search results after allegedly buying links for clients. It appears that all parties discovered in the investigation have been delisted as well. (Search Engine Land)

A 3-Step Process for Creating a Keyword Plan

"The keyword game isn’t just about traffic, it’s also about quality. You have to look at conversion rates to make an educated decision." Here’s on pro’s three-step process for creating an effective and profitable keyword plan: 1) keyword research for SEO, 2) keyword research for semantic understanding and 3) creating keywords for conversion. (Quick Sprout)

7 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Better Than Link Building

Here are seven reasons why content marketing trumps link building for marketers: 1) measurement, 2) naturalness, 3) cost, 4) scale, 5) defensibility, 6) authority and 7) fun. (Search Engine Watch)

10 Myths That SEOs Shouldn’t Be Scared of

Here’s a rundown of 10 SEO myths that should be put to rest. Included in the list are: "I’m worried because I have too many links pointing to my site from one particular domain;" "My keyword density is too high;" and "Will URLs without keywords prevent me from ranking well?" (SEOmoz)

How to Track AdWords and Facebook Ads in 5 Steps

"If you struggle with tracking and measuring the performance of your AdWords or Facebook pay-per-click ads, this blog post is for you." Whether your goal is a lead or a purchase, here are five steps for measuring your AdWords and Facebook ads: 1) set up your goals, 2) create a unique URL for each ad, 3) be consistent and well-organized, 4) review performance, and 5) optimized based on conversions (not clicks). (MarketingSherpa Blog)

Search Engine Marketers Need Lobbyists

Google spent $5 million to influence politicians last quarter. But who is looking out for the interests of search and social marketers on Capitol Hill? These groups need representation in Washington, D.C. (Search Engine Land)

52 Changes to Google in April

In April, Google changed 52 things about its search algorithm. While many of them weren’t all that noteworthy, there are others that are worth your time. They fall into three categories: smarter, local and more relevant. (ReadWriteWeb)

33 Free SEO Tools to Know About

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Here’s a comprehensive list of free SEO tools you should know about, split up into 11 categories. For example, for backlink investigation, consider Ahrefs Site Explorer. For content and markup analysis, consider Copyscape. For social discovery, consider Blogger LinkUp. (Web Gnomes)

How to Set up a Facebook Ad Campaign

There are 12 steps to setting up ads on Facebook. It begins with creating an ad, selecting where to advertise and setting up the ads. It ends with setting your objective and pricing, reviewing your ad, and launching your Facebook ad. (HubSpot)

Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing for Website Owners

“For most web entrepreneurs and bloggers, it’s easy to overlook something like cross-browser compatibility testing, as most of us fall into the trap of thinking that it’s either too small of an issue to worry about or that it’s something your web designer will have taken care of. Unfortunately neither of the scenarios is always accurate.” Cross-compatibility testing involves Google Analytics to check problem areas, cross-browser compatibility tools and keeping up with changing Web standards. (SEOmoz)