The Week in Review

Facebook Doubled Its Advertising Market Share From 2009 to 2010

According to data from ZenithOptimedia, Facebook claimed 3.1 percent of global Internet ad spending in 2010. This was more than double its 1.4 percent share in 2009. Google hogged 44.1 percent of the market in 2010, up from 41.9 percent in 2009. (ZDNet)

Lowering Cost per Lead With a 3-Pronged Attack to Inbound Marketing

Blogging (and/or webinars), social media and content marketing are the three prongs of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is more streamlined than outbound marketing, and generates bigger returns on investments. (KISSmetrics)

SEO Industry Survey: Word of Mouth Is the Biggest Source of Leads

Datadial recently conducted a survey looking at the business side of SEO. The findings are summarized in an infographic. Among the findings was that word of mouth is the biggest source of leads, followed closely by referrals. Also, keyword research, page optimization and link-building are the three most common tactics included in a typical campaign. (Datadial)

Tips for Making Your Site Load Faster

The time your site takes to load is important for achieving high search rankings. One tool to use is Page Speed, a Firefox add-on. Other tactics include using a cache plugin, optimizing your database and using the best template. (Tipifam)

New .XXX Domain Goes on Sale

ICM Registry began selling .XXX domain names on a first come, first served basis Tuesday. The new domain is meant to be a "responsible alternative" for adult sites. (ICM Registry)

7 Strategies to Make Facebook SEO-Friendly

You need to implement SEO strategies in your Facebook pages if you want to get exposure from them. Here are seven tactics to use: 1) choose a good Facebook page name; 2) choose a good URL name; 3) use keyword-rich text in the “About” and “Info” sections; 4) make Facebook picture descriptions count; 5) use keywords in your Facebook status updates; 6) use Notes and Discussion Boards; 7) include shares and likes on your websites. (JustCreativeDesign.com)

10 SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore

SEO is no longer simple. If you want high rankings, you need to pay attention to these 10 changes. Included are Panda/Farmer/Scraper, Caffeine, unexpected SERP changes and site speed as a ranking signal. (Quick Sprout)

10 Google Search Changes

Google has announced 10 search changes, ranging from algorithmic, crawling and user interface updates. Among the 10 changes are: related-query-results refinements, more comprehensive indexing, new “parked domain” classifier and more autocomplete predictions. (Search Engine Watch)

How to Use Pinterest for Local SEO

Pinterest might give you that extra lift in your holiday season local search rankings you’re looking for. The young social media site can convey ranking benefits. Here are several tips for local SEO on Pinterest for local businesses. (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Squeezes in a Sixth Ad Unit, Struggles to Avoid Annoying People

In the right-hand column of many Facebook users’ screens is a sixth ad, a move that appears intended to boost the social networking giant’s revenue before a potential initial public offering. That said, Facebook is still struggling to become financially lucrative without annoying its users. (AllFacebook, guardian.co.uk)

Email Marketing: Industry Research and Trends

Email marketing should be integrated with social media and mobile marketing efforts by small businesses. This big roundup of email marketing research and statistics from various industry resources highlights email marketing’s importance. (eCommerce-Guide.com)

Google-AdMeld Deal Closes

With the Google-AdMeld deal finally closed, Google now has even more power and reach in the display-ad business. “Essentially, Google now controls one of the major systems advertisers use to choose where to place their ads. Expect the search giant to link AdMeld’s technology to DoubleClick, making Google an even bigger force in web advertising.” (Ben Parr’s Entrepreneurial Musings)

Optimizing to Improve Your Quality Score

Search marketers must continually improve their campaigns to accommodate algorithms that increasingly take site-side factors, such as landing-page relevance, into account. For landing pages, a high CTR is the biggest determinant of Quality Score. (Ismoip)

What You Need to Know to Dominate Local Search

Faring well in local search involves many factors. Among the ways to optimize for local search on your website are to blog, optimize the five crucial on-page SEO elements and optimize your site for mobile. Optimizing for local search off your site involves things like submitting to local directories, being a celebrity and being on local-review sites. (HubSpot)

How and Why Search Queries Will Die

Web-based search engines are a thing based on past restrictions. Search is a service, and new technologies like Google’s mobile voice search and Apple’s Siri reveal what search could look like as an invisible interface. (Search Engine People)

Twitter Unveils Self-Serve Ad Platform

Twitter has slowly been rolling out its self-serve ad platform since mid-November with a group of fewer than 20 advertisers. “The ultimate goal is for advertisers to set up campaigns without ever making contact with a Twitter sales rep, in the vein of Google AdWords and Facebook’s self-serve platform, but the advertisers in this launch were already customers.” (AdAge.com)

Search Engines and SEO Best Practices

What happens when you turn software that checks sites for technical SEO best practices on the search engine’s own sites? Among the findings are that Bing was the only search engine to use a proper link rel=canonical tag on the home page, YouTube redirects with a 302 (temporary) rather than a 301 (permanent) redirect, and no search engine had a serious DNS issue. Lessons can be had for everyone when looking at the findings of this test. (Search Engine Land)

How Google Killed the Long Tail

This infographic, titled “How Google Killed the Long Tail,” walks through the various steps Google took to cut various pieces of the long tail. For instance, its auto-replacement of misspelled queries eliminated the efficacy of pages targeted at long-tail misspellings. Search mutation, and the “Query Deserves Freshness” algorithm are among other measure Google took to kill the long tail. (SEO Book.com)

YaCy: The World’s First Peer-to-Peer Search Engine

YaCy (pronounced “ya see”) is a German search company that has released a peer-to-peer search engine that utilizes networked systems to index the Web and deliver search results. By leveraging the individuals who download and run YaCy’s software, the company is attempting to match the breadth and power of Google’s index. It isn’t aiming to kill Google, but if it succeeds, it may encourage other search engines to decentralize as well. (Search Engine Watch)

Using the New AdWords Landing-Page Algorithm to Improve On-Page SEO

Establishing a high Quality Score (QS) is great for your PPC keywords, but what does it have to do with SEO? “Well, if your QS is low and your SEO landing page isn’t performing as well as you think it should be in the SERPS, take this as a massive clue to how Google currently views both your paid and organic efforts.” (State of Search)

Q3 2011 Internet Advertising Revenues up 22% Year-Over-Year

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US, Internet advertising revenues reached $7.9 billion in the third quarter, up 22 percent from the same quarter last year. (IAB)

New AdWords Social Extension Shows Google +1’s in PPC Ads

Once you’ve set up a Google+ business page, it’s time to look into enabling AdWords social extensions, which is a way of annotating your Google+ follower count to your PPC ads. “I can tell you that I have seen a nice bump in CTR on all of my ads that have been shown with the social extensions.” (SEOmoz)

Adobe Acquires Efficient Frontier

Adobe is acquiring Efficient Frontier in an attempt to take the guesswork out of digital advertising. “We are empowering the marketing team to optimize paid search, make informed social ad buying decisions, see the real ROI of social media channels through a social engagement platform from Context Optional, and harness the power of real-time bidding technology for display advertising.” (Adobe)

The Best Cities for SEO Jobs

This infographic shows the top 20 U.S. markets for SEO jobs, by volume and salary. New York City leads the way in both volume and salary. Also, 27 percent of SEO jobs have the title “SEO Manager,” 25 percent have the title “SEO Analyst/Specialist,” while 21 percent have the title “SEO/Search Marketing Director.” (Onward Search)

5 Ways to Prevent Landing-Page Abandonment

If you’re seeing some of your landing pages performing better than others, Here are five likely reasons why your site visitors click through to your landing page then abandon it: 1) your landing page didn’t pass the blink test, 2) your landing page had too many distractions, 3) you didn’t use actionable language, 4) your form wasn’t worth the work and 5) your offer didn’t match your call-to-action. (HubSpot)