The Week in Review

Facebook Testing New Coupon Posts and Ads
Facebook is testing a new premium ad offering that enables pages to post a coupon for their fans and use that post as an ad unit on the Facebook home page. Users can click on “Get Coupon” or “Share.” “This type of coupon promotion differs from Facebook Check-In Deals, which is a self-serve promotion tool that allows businesses to offer coupons to people who visit a location and check in with Facebook.” (Inside Facebook)

Facebook Ready to Unveil Mobile Ads by the End of March
Facebook is readying its push into mobile advertising by the end of March, which would give the company another revenue stream ahead of its anticipated initial public offering. “An idea being considered is putting Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ads, which feature friends’ interactions with brands, within the mobile News Feed, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans aren’t public.” (Bloomberg)

12 Days of Christmas: An Internet Marketing Roundup
Here’s a roundup of 12 posts related to “12 Days of” something related to Internet marketing. Included are Outspoken Media’s 12 Days of SEO, SEO.com’s The 12 Days of Christmas: Website Disaster Style and Spectate’s 12 Days of Blogging. (Search Engine Journal)

Searchers Pick Brand Over Quality
According to a study from Microsoft Research, domain names are a crucial element for capturing clicks and conversions from search results. This is both good news and bad news for search marketers. (Search Engine Land)

40 Essential SEO Terms to Know
Simply put, this is a list of the 40 most essential SEO terms marketers should know to help them communicate with developers and understand how to optimize their sites. Among the terms are 301 Redirect, Anchor Text, The Fold, Nofollow and Spider. (HubSpot)

12 SEO Authority-Building Tips
“From an SEO perspective, building authority only works if you have some sort of web presence for people to capitalize on.” Assuming you have a blog and a social media presence, you’ll want to benefit from the reinforcing powers each has one the other. Gain trust, be consistent, be social, write for industry journals and meet people face to face, among other things. (Search Engine Watch)

Paid Search Drives $6 in Local Sales for Every $1 in Online Sales
According to a study from RevTrax, for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers should expect about $6 of in-store revenue. “In other words, paid search has 6:1 impact on offline sales over e-commerce.” The rise of smartphones and other methodologies makes tracking consumer behavior online to offline more available. (Search Engine Land)

6 Outbound-Linking Tips for Free Blog Promotion
When you link out to other blogs in your niche, be sure to remember these six things: 1) link out only to enrich the value of your own content; 2) link out to build relationships; 3) link to active commenters’ blogs; 4) target small blogs; 5) make the subject of the linked post evident; 6) become an information resource. (StayOnSearch)

The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing
Here’s an overview of content marketing for beginners. It touches on the following points: 1) the fatal flaws of traditional advertising; 2) an in-depth introduction to content marketing; 3) the advantages that content marketing provides over traditional advertising; 4) tips on the best practices that will make your content marketing more effective. (KISSmetrics)

5 Facts to Know About the Future of SEO
Let’s extrapolate from search engines’ activities in the past few years to see if we can identify trends to come. Here are five facts about the future of SEO: 1) content is king, 2) natural backlinks will always win, 3) personalized search will be a reality, 4) optimization for multiple platforms is key and 5) social activity will increase in importance. (Search Engine Journal)

How to Create a Killer Facebook Ad Campaign
Facebook advertisements are great complements to your inbound marketing efforts. The process might seem intimidating, but an effective strategy just involves setting up your goals, outlining your ad campaign plan, deciding who to target, defining the budget and tracking your progress. (HubSpot)

IAC/InterActiveCorp Is Google’s Biggest U.S. Search Advertiser
According to Kantar Media, the top spender on Google search advertisements in 2011 (through three quarters) is IAC InterActiveCorp, with roughly $174.2 million spent. Amazon, AT&T, Expedia and Experian Group followed. (AdAge.com)

The Decline of Organic Links
SEO Book.com has created an infographic titled “An Ode to the Organic Link and How Google Made Them Irrelevant.” It begins with the NoFollow tag Google introduced in January 2005. The unintended consequences of this tag was the rise of content farms, “which hoarded PageRank by placing NoFollow on all outbound links.” (SEOBook.com)

The Search Marketer’s Dilemma: Reporting vs. Optimizing
“Cross-channel revenue attribution — arguably the most widely agreed upon concept in the analytics space — is ironically the source of the search marketer’s dilemma.” While no free tool exists to perfectly address this issue, search marketers can use third-party bid management solutions that integrate Google Analytics or other third-party analytics data into their software. (Search Engine Land)

5 Web Tools You Didn’t Know About
Hashtagify.me, Mppr.me, Gamification Q&A, Domain Hole and Replo are five Web tools you probably didn’t know about until now. Read up on how each can help you in your daily work. (Search Engine People)

Search Engine Algorithm Basics
“A good search engine does not attempt to return the pages that best match the input query. A good search engine tries to answer the underlying question.” This is why Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to determine what results to return to users. Here’s an explanation of these algorithms in plain terms. (SEOmoz)

Video Ad Views Rose by 128% in 2011
According to Free Wheel, video ad views grew 128 percent in 2011, finishing the third quarter with 7.2 billion ad views. Long-form content now has an average of 5.0 ads per video, up from 3.1 ads per long-form video in 2010. (Search Engine Watch)

Google Currents Is Introduced
Google Currents, a new application for Android devices that enables users to explore online magazines and other content, has been unveiled. The app has more than 150 publishing partners. It also has a self-service platform for publishers. (Google Mobile Blog)

The New Twitter
Twitter introduced a major redesign Thursday. It includes a new timeline, new discover features and new brand pages, among other updates and changes. The redesign will be rolled out slowly. (TechCrunch, Mashable)

6 Steps for Awesome Email Subject Lines
If you know the “secret sauce” for writing a killer email subject line, it saves you time and you’ll understand what resonates with your audience. The six ingredients for great email subject lines are: 1) deliverability, 2) actionability, 3) personalization, 4) clarity, 5) brevity and 6) consistency. (HubSpot)

SEO Conference Advice
Here are some honest tips for SEO conference organizers, speakers and attendees. For organizers: pay your speakers, don’t give away speaking slots to sponsors and don’t segregate too much between speakers and attendees. For speakers: represent yourself and your business well, meet new people and be humble. For attendees: don’t be shy (but don’t be annoying, either), remember to think critically and take one good idea from each session. (State of Search)

5 Quick Checks to Transform Your AdWords Account in Less Than an Hour
Got an hour? Good – you have enough time to transform your Google AdWords account with five quick checks: 1) device segmentation, 2) day-of-week/hour-of-day segmentation, 3) segment by geography, 4) segment by destination URL and 5) run your account through the free AdWords performance grader. (MarketingProfs)

4 New Year’s Resolutions for Every Digital Marketer
Here are four New Year’s resolutions that all “media” professionals should focus on in 2012: 1) join “media anonymous,” 2) learn something new, 3) cut the fat from your retargeting and 4) stick to your resolutions. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Offers Downstream-Conversion Tracking to Advertisers
Though Facebook discontinued its conversion-tracking program in September 2010, the company has been quietly offering a special downstream-conversion tracking system to some of its top advertisers. “Rather than letting advertisers include a tracking pixel or drop cookies from their Facebook ads, Facebook installs its own pixel on an advertiser’s conversion page, such as an ecommerce checkout or signup success page.” (TechCrunch)

Email Is the New Social
At MediaPost Email Insider Summit, “social is the new email” has been a recurring theme. “There is a frisson of excitement about social media, but email marketers say they have been connecting people effectively for years.” Email is more personal than the likes of Facebook or Twitter, and there’s no “big brother.” (MediaPost)