Recent Articles on Internet Marketing for September 7th Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Sep 7, 2010

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

Andy Beal, Keyword Research with Google Suggest Could Add 5,000 Visitors a Day!, Marketing Pilgrim, 03 Sept 2010. Explains the value of following the "Google Suggest" leads to find more actionable keywords for your site.

Jeanniey Mullen, 30 Do's and Don'ts for E-mail Rock Stars, ClickZ, 30 Aug 2010. Short summary of e-mail best -- and worst -- practices.

Tim Ash, Limitations of Personas in Landing Page Testing, ClickZ, 30 Aug 2010. Explains what personas are and gives an example. But observes that for large-scale statistical landing page optimization tests, personas have significant limitations. Personas should be constructed from real people, not only from  personality types and behavioral styles. They don't work as well for international audiences and diverse visitor populations. Personas have competing needs, may lead you address the wrong questions. Moreover, personas can include assumptions at odds with the spirit of testing.

Julie Batten, Do's and Don'ts for Your Search Campaigns, ClickZ, 30 Aug 2010. Do's and don'ts for both organic search and PPC campaigns.

Sean Carton, The Great Click Debate, ClickZ, 30 Aug 2010. Outlines the arguments of direct response vs. branding advertising.

Niel Mason, Acquisition Marketing - Where Is the True Value? ClickZ, 31 Aug 2010. "Maybe it's time to move our understanding of the effectiveness of acquisition marketing to a CPC model again with a twist. We might want to consider evaluating the cost per customer rather than the cost per click. Acquisition is about customers and not actions."

Stephanie Miller, A Deliverable E-mail Address Does Not a Relationship Make, ClickZ, 1 Sept 2010. Offers 6 tips to boost engagement with your e-mail subscribers: customized welcome message, feedback surveys, list segmentation, ask permission for higher frequency options.

Derek Harding, Click-to-Open Ratio and Its Shortcomings, ClickZ, 2 Sept 2010. Discusses the difficulties with the e-mail metric known as "click-to-open" (CTO) or "click-to-open ration" (COTR). Concludes that Click-thru-Rate (CTR) is just as useful.

Anna Maria Virzi, Corporate Blogs in a Social World, ClickZ, 3 Sept 2010. Examines three approaches to successful corporate blogs used by Google (team approach), MintLife (consumer focus), Adobe (personal ownership of blogs).

Brad Hauck, The Affiliate Marketer's Social Media Profit System, AssociatePrograms.com, 1-Sept-2010. Here's the plan: (1) create an account, (2) build your profile, (3) find some friends to connect with, (4) get involved with your friends, (5) promote a product, (6) grow often.

Ryan Abood as told to Nitasha Tiku, How Google Cost Me $4 Million, Inc. Magazine, 1 Sept 2010. Explains how GourmetGiftBaskets.com got penalized by Google when an SEO service purchased links to boost rankings. Explains how it used PPC and social media to stay alive, and were finally "pardoned."

Frank Reed, No Surprise Here: Millenials Cherish Mobile Devices, Marketing Pilgrim, 1 Sept 2010. From Pew Research data, shows graph that demonstrates how Millenials (age 18-29) value their mobile phones as a "necessity, "compared to individuals 65+. Mobile marketing here we come.

James A. Martin, 10 Ways to Optimize an Online Newsroom, SmallBusinessComputing.com, 30 Aug 2010. Offers tips to making your newsroom an industry portal, producing link-worthy content, including industry news feeds, showcasing new posts, using WordPress, issuing press releases, and adding keyword-rich descriptions to image alt text in online photos.

Matt Lawson, Paid Search Strategies For Boosting Holiday Season Profits, Search Engine Land, 30 Aug 2010. Tips for PPC are: (1) boost bids going into the holidays, (2) adjust your budgets and max CPCs to handle holiday volume, (3) plan for break-out items, (4) pay attention to ground shipping cutoff dates, and (5) manage bids to inventory.

Mary Madden, Older Adults and Social Media, Pew Internet and American Life Project, 27 Aug 2010. Full report shows nice graph showing social media adoption by age from 2005 to 2010, as well as use of other online activity by age.