Recent Articles on Internet Marketing for August 24th Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Aug 24, 2010

Here are a few recent articles and resources I found this week that might interest you.

Matt Van Wagner, Back to School Time: A Refresher Course on Writing Great Ads, Search Engine Land, 23 Aug 2010. Discusses 6 keys to well-crafted online text ads: (1) well-targeted, (2) speaks to audience, (3) clear, dramatic benefits, (4) filtering language, (5) succinct headline, and (6) simply stated offer.

Janine Popick, 11 Email Marketing Terms You Need to Know, Vertical Response Marketing Blog, 17 Aug 2010. Provides definitions for ROI, open rate, above the fold, preview pane, copy, hosted email, spoofing, phishing, targeting, whitelists, and web-friendly fonts.

Jakob Nielsen, Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design? Alertbox, 23 Aug 2010. Although successful websites typically have high usability, average sites can hurt their business by copying design elements that don't work well in other contexts.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, 25-point Website Usability Checklist, Strategic Web Usability, 10 Feb 2010. Provides a helpful usability checklist in four sections: accessibility, identity, navigation, and content.

Carrie Hill, Remarketing for Everyone with Google AdWords, Search Engine Land, 20 Aug 2010. Explains remarketing, showing additional ads to those who previously clicked-through to your site on Google AdWords.

Julie Batten, Tools for Advanced PPC Management and Reporting, ClickZ, 16 Aug 2010. Comments on Acquisio Search, Atlas Search, Clickable Pro, Marin Software, Kenshoo Search, and SearchForce, as well as Omniture SearchCenter and Coremetrics Search 9.

Jeanniey Mullen, We All Get Old Eventually, ClickZ, 17 Aug 2010. To combat e-mail offer fatigue the author recommends: (1) refresh the creative on your "notification e-mails," (2) search.twitter.com for entries about your brand, and update copy with phrases real people use, and (3) test a "holiday" e-mail to people who have been on your list for over a year.

Mark Jackson, Why Host a Blog on Your Corporate Website? ClickZ, 18 Aug 2010. Reasons to add a blog to your corporate site are: thought leadership, use of human language, building website depth, links, and fresh content.

Tessa Wegert, Ads As Entertainment, ClickZ, 19 Aug 2010. Suggests three ways your company brand can entertain: YouTube video channel, a microsite designed to have a viral effect, and through banner ads transformed into self-contained video channels.

Ed Henrich, E-mail: Make It the Linchpin of Your Digital Holiday Planning, ClickZ, 19 Aug 2010. Suggests planning now for Q4 results. Focus on fixing what you have now, not completely revamping your entire e-mail program. (1) Review what you learned from 2009. (2) Improve list health with appropriate frequency. (3) Cross-pollinate your e-mail and social networks.

Augustine Fou, Social Commerce: In Friends We Trust, ClickZ, 19 Aug 2010. How do you use social networks for marketing purposes? Explains the value of social capital. Suggests: (1) don't treat social networks as media buys, (2) get your product or service into the hands of active socializers, (3) set up listening posts on social networks, and (4) make recommendations easy and the distance to commerce short.

Josh Dreller, Step-By-Step: Your First Keyword Report, Search Engine Land, 19 Aug 2010. Explains how to produce a helpful account performance report on Google AdWords, including all the settings options you have.

Sandra Niehaus, Conversion Zen: Transforming Errors Into Opportunities, Search Engine Land, 18 Aug 2010. Explains why no one is in charge of error pages, and how to make them friendlier.

Lori Weiman, Important Restrictions To Include In Your Affiliate Agreement, Search Engine Land, 18 Aug 2010. Suggests things to include in a affiliate agreement, such as URL hijacking, competitive band bidding, and a dozen others.

Andrea Scarnecchia, Mission Impossible? Creating Extraordinary Email Subject Lines , Lyris HQ, 18 Aug 2010. Discusses how to create effective subject lines: personalization, urgency, and testing and measuring.

Greg Finn, Facebook E-Commerce: A Look At Facebook Shopping Carts, Search Engine Land, 17 Aug 2010. Discusses various shopping carts build for Facebook: Milyoni iFanStore, Payvment, Ecwid, Moluko, and Facebook Marketplace.

Debra Mastaler, Smart Links Can Make Your SEO Sing, Search Engine Land, 17 Aug 2010. Tips on link-building: Use keywords as anchor text and point links to pages that have been optimized for the keyword terms you're using in your anchors.

Sean James, Google Analytics Tracking Code and Page Speed, SEO Newsletter, 16 Aug 2010. Explains how the new "asynchronous" Google Analytics tracking code provides faster page loading than the old ga.js version, and how to install it.