The Week in Review

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Now that Facebook is public, you might be wondering about a simple question: How does Facebook make money? The majority of Facebook’s business is advertising — more specifically, those ads on the right side of any Facebook page you’re on. In the first quarter of 2012, 82 percent of Facebook’s sales came from ads. The remaining 18 percent came from payments and other fees (e.g., credits). (ReadWriteWeb)

Google Ordered to Fix 4 Areas in Their Business to End Antitrust Inquiry

European antitrust officials have offered to end the 18-month investigation into Google’s monopoly abuses if the company agrees to make changes in four areas of its business practices: general search results, using content from competing vertical search services, search advertisements and AdWords. (Search Engine Watch)

Engagement-Based Emailing

"While some are trying to dispel the whole notion that mailing long-term inactives is a danger at all, there’s mounting evidence that smart marketers are taking prudent steps to improve their deliverability and email revenue by using engagement metrics." Engagement-based email isn’t just about how often you email inactives — it’s also about emailing the most engaged subscribers more. (MediaPost)

Competitive Information Available in New Google AdWords Report

Auction Insights is a new Google AdWords report that helps marketers understand how their ads compare to others in the same auctions. It offers data at the keyword level for five statistics: impression share, average position, overlap rate, position above rate and top-of-page percent. (Search Engine Land)

How to Increase Your Facebook EdgeRank

If your Facebook posts don’t seem to get much attention, it’s probably because you have a low EdgeRank score. The three factors of EdgeRank, Facebook’s algorithm for its news feeds, are affinity, weight and time. To improve your EdgeRank, post on optimal days and at optimal times, post consistently, build a community, and encourage responses. (Vertical Measures)

‘Ads Related to’ Text Is Introduced Atop AdWords Ad Blocks

The words “Ads related to…” have appeared before search queries, but now they sit atop the top AdWords ad block in Google search results. The aim is to show users that these ads are more relevant and informative, while also being transparent. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Acquires Karma

Facebook has acquired Karma, a social gifting service. Gifting is a social activity and was part of Facebook’s early pitch. With the company’s advertising business under scrutiny, making money off physical goods with the help of Karma might pad Facebook’s revenue stream. (CNET News)

Google: Android Will Be Free for at Least the Next Five Years

In order to get China’s approval of its purchase of Motorola Mobility, Google agreed to keep Android free and available to anyone for at least the next five years. This could have been done to calm fears that Google would give Motorola preferential treatment over other Android OEMs. (The Verge)

A Step-by-Step Guide to SEO

Here’s a simple step-by-step guide through setting up a site’s SEO on the right foot. On-site SEO basics, the reason for content, link building, the benefit of Google+ and monitoring results are topics of discussion. (KISSmetrics)

The Google Knowledge Graph and SEO

Google’s Knowledge Graph is the search engine’s biggest change since 2007. The three main pieces of the update set to affect natural search results are: 1) links to different sets of results based on contextual meanings for any given search term; 2) topic summaries with key facts in the sidebar of SERPs; and 3) information boxes offering additional information in the sidebar, based on popular related queries. “This is perhaps another signal to diversify sources of traffic to your website and to rely less on Google or any one source of traffic.” (Social Media Today)

Mobile Advertising Market Will Reach $5 Billion by 2015

According to a report from Smaato and MobileSQUARED, the mobile advertising market was $1.24 billion in 2011. This figure is expected to balloon to $5.04 billion by 2015. Forty-nine percent of mobile ad budgets are committed to search, 33 percent to display, 12 percent to SMS/MMS/P2P messaging and 6 percent to video. (Mashable)

It’s Time to Focus Email Optimization for the Small Screen

If you’re still optimizing email messages for traditional browsers on desktop and laptop computer screens, you’re in a shrinking majority. The emergence of mobile devices as mediums used to view emails means different behaviors need to be taken into account. Have you created mobile landing pages that are linked from mobile versions of your template? Are your call-to-action buttons fit for tapping on a touchscreen? Are your images appropriately scaled? (ClickZ)

5 Reasons Why Keywords Suck

Keywords are the lifeblood and bane of a search engine marketer’s existence. “With an infinite number of keywords that could be associated with any retailer’s product catalog, it’s damn near impossible to predict and manage all the right keywords that will maximize your revenue and return on ad spend.” Here are five reasons why keywords suck: 1) they don’t scale; 2) they don’t map cleanly to products; 3) they’re organized in a way that’s completely different from how a business is organized; 4) they leave marketers in a bind; and 5) the more products you have in your catalog, the more potential keywords you can bid on. (MediaPost)

Intrasite Linking Practices to Review

Among the intrasite linking practices you should review with your developers or clients when analyzing sites are: top menu bars, margin link lists, page footer links and tag clouds. (SEO Theory and Analysis Blog)

A Look Into the World of Google’s Algorithm Changes

Google Fellow Amit Singhal recently gave a notable opening keynote speech at SMX London. Among the major points in his talk was what Google looks at when improving unpaid search algorithms. Singhal also touched on intent, personalization, relevance and data, and Panda and Penguin. “At the end of the day, he said, site owners need to take a hard look at what value their sites are providing. What is the additional value the visitor gets from that site beyond just a skeleton answer?” (Search Engine Land)

Facebook’s IPO Set at $38 per Share

Facebook’s IPO is set at $38 a share today, making it a $16.0 billion offering of 421.2 million shares, which makes it the biggest Internet IPO ever – nearly 10 times as large as Google’s in 2004. Nevertheless, advertisers appear to need a little more convincing that the social network is what they really need. If Facebook fails to win them over, their stock could suffer. (CNET News, NYTimes.com)

44% of Facebook Users Will ‘Never’ Click on Sponsored Ads

According to a Greenlight study, 44 percent of Facebook users say they will “never” click on sponsored posts or display ads on the social network. Meanwhile, 30 percent of respondents said they “strongly distrust” Facebook when it comes to their personal data. (VentureBeat)

Twitter Introduces Do Not Track Option

Twitter might not track its users as much as Facebook, but it’s following in Mozilla’s footsteps by offering the Do Not Track feature in Firefox. Enabling the feature allows users to opt out of cookies that collect personal information and third-party cookies. (NYTimes.com)

The List of Reasons Why You Need SEO

Here it is: the last list you’ll ever need when it comes to why you need search engine optimization (SEO). The exhaustive list includes 28 reasons, including: SEO is an investment, not a cost; SEO can multiply your impact; and SEO drives offline sales. (Search Engine Land)

How to Tell if You Have a Link Network (Without Knowing It)

If Google’s Penguin update did a number on you, calm down and find your link network and how all your sites are connected. First, use OpenSiteExplorer, MajesticSEO or Screaming Frog. Then find all the sites you or your client might own. Then it’s off to seeing how your sites are connected, while filtering out the noise. After this, visualize the data, and burn (or no-follow) the bad networks. (SEOmoz)

Coupons Lead to the Most Engagement on Facebook

According to a report from Wildfire, coupons get the highest response rates on Facebook, followed by giveaways and sweepstakes. However, "pick your favorites" queries get the highest rate of sharing, followed by quizzes and trivia contests. (Mashable)

20 Signs Your Marketing Needs Help

Marketing done well is great, but marketing done poorly is the "dark side where email spammers, poor segmenters, and keyword stuffers live trying to pass off their activities as marketing." Here’s a list of 20 hints that your marketing might stink, including mysterylinks, mucked-up mail merges and slimy social automation. (HubSpot)

Facebook’s Biggest Problem: It’s a Media Company

Facebook’s business model has received a lot of attention lately, especially in light of General Motors doing away with its $10 million ad campaign on the social network. The idea that’s emerging is that "while Facebook may look like and function like a social network for the majority of its users, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a traditional media company, and that is both good and bad." Armed with a lacking fleet of advertising channels, Facebook may need to diversity its revenue sources. (GigaOM)

Google Launches ‘Knowledge Graph’ to Provide Answers in Search Results

Google has finally unveiled its "Knowledge Graph," which displays popular facts about people, places and things alongside the search engine’s traditional search results. This is a big change, though it won’t exactly rock a user’s experience with Google. As of now, Knowledge Graph results lack some actions users might want to take with some (e.g., booking tickets). "The big picture, of course, is that some day the Knowledge Graph won’t just be used for facts. Instead, if Google can better tag actual web pages to entities, then it can better understand what those pages are about and related to, which might increase the relevancy of its regular results." (Search Engine Land)

How to Make Second-Tier Search Engines Part of Your Lead-Generation Strategy

Working with second-tier search engines and networks can yield plenty of traffic at a low cost. "While the quality of traffic coming from these traffic sources may be lower than Google or Bing’s traffic, the large amount of traffic at a low cost rate can end up working out to your CPA goals in the end." Day-parting, testing and management are among the tactics to use with these second-tier networks. Advertise.com, 7Search and Baidu are among the second-tier engines and ad networks to consider. (Search Engine Watch)