The Week in Search & Social for July 28

• 24 Top Paid Search Metrics Explained – Good glossary of traffic, conversion & efficiency metrics includes both terms that we know that clients may not, and a few terms they may use that we usually don’t.
• Google to Offer Credit Card to AdWords Users – No annual fee, 8.99% APR, and only for use on AdWords, the new Mastercards is intended “to help small and medium businesses ramp up their sales with intensive ad campaigns when needed.”
• Google Study: PPC Ads Do NOT Cannibalize Your Organic Traffic – The study found that paid search ads resulted in an 89% incremental lift in site visitors – above and beyond traffic you would normally expect from your organic listings.

SEO

• Google’s Negative Ranking Factors – From obvious ones like domain name length to surprising ones like AdSense ads showing a negative correlation with organic rankings.
• How Google Might Rank Pages Based on Usage Information – a new patent filing from Google points to two types of usage data that might impact rankings: number of unique visitors and frequency of visits.

Analytics

• Sneaky Ways to use Facebook to spy on your competitors – Crafty way to discover total share counts a competitor’s FB page receives, find out what categories your competitors are using and more.

Social Media

• 8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results – Just having a YouTube channel is no longer enough for the average business. You need to be sure to optimize, create, and build a subscriber base if you want to capitalize on the 35% increase in online video viewing.
• Facebook Expands Like Suggestions for Admin – Friends that have received an invite to “Like” a Page will now receive emails and notifications, instead of just the sidebar message, opening growth potential for Pages.

Local Search Engine Optimization

• Google Relaunches Google Boost As AdWords Express – Major changes include ability to change ad title and you can have one ad per category instead of just one for all categories.
• Google Places Testing New Layout – Google has removed some information from Places listings in the new layout including citations, email address, optional attributes and 3rd party reviews (can still get to them through a link on the listing that takes you to the site).

B2C

• American Express Launches Deal/Rewards Program – Starting with national retailers, businesses can offer a deal that when bought, can give A.E. card holders rewards such as $10 statement credit.
• eMarketer Quick Stat – 72.6% of Internet users (14 years and older) will buy online in 2011.

B2B

• [INFOGRAPHIC] Top B2B Marketing Conferences
• Content Marketing: Keeping Creative Talent on Retainer – Article outlining the huge benefits gained by Eloqua through keeping creative talent on retainer to help with content, or inbound marketing efforts.
• Lead Scoring: What’s Hot What’s Not – Overview of implicit scoring versus explicit scoring of your B2B leads, and what this means for your marketing efforts.
• What to Do When Buyers Want the Status Quo – The main enemy of making a sale is often the need of B2B buyers to maintain the status quo. Using case studies is often one of the best ways to clear this hurdle to increase sales.
• Community? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Community – How building and maintaining a community results in significant ROI improvements for B2B businesses.

Web Design

• Choosing an effective Font for your Site – 5 tips to help you nail down the perfect font to fit your website.

Mobile

• Consumers losing patience with the slow mobile web – expectations are high on smartphones to have a website load quickly.  Bottom line: make sure your mobile site is small and easy to use.
• Smartphone Penetration in Asia Set to Boom – the time to optimize your site for the Asian smartphone market is now, as adoption rates are increasing.

Conversion Optimization

• Landing Page Battles of the Flat Forehead – How to avoid banging your head against the wall when working on landing page testing