Pete Prestipino says, “Customer reviews can be used for so much more than just convincing other customers about the quality of products or the excellence of a brand.SpareFoot, a self-storage marketplace that lets consumers find physical storage units, is taking its customer reviews a few steps further (pun intended). The company announced recently that it has begun using the Trustpilot platform to integrate reviews into its customer service processes, product development decisions and even its employee morale initiatives.Thanks to Trustpilot’s API (which helps gather and publish reviews... [...]

Ryan Chester says, “Imagine if the Amazon River was filled with gold and you could divert it to your backyard. Well that is what YouTube has recently become, a goldmine of traffic. It offers a great opportunity to quickly attract tons of traffic to your website.That’s why corporations worldwide are trying to figure out the magic of optimizing for YouTube.Using this list you can make your video stand out in the crowded searches of YouTube and divert traffic to your website.GET YOUR VIDEO’S KEYWORDSFirst thing you should go attack is your competitors’ videos. Find out what keywords... [...]

Matt Swan says, “With the end of the year fast approaching, it is time to focus our attention on the year ahead and what we can expect to see across the channel in 2015.By no means an exhaustive list, here are four trends expected to shape the industry next year.MAKING LIFE EASIER FOR AFFILIATESAffiliate marketing is a simple concept but one that is often over complicated by those working in the industry. Numerous acronyms, unintuitive interfaces and failing to adequately display program information in an easily accessible way are all contributing to this. The assumption is that affiliates... [...]

Pete Prestpino says, “Take a minute from reading all those year-end wrap up’s and prediction lists to do something really, really important for your website right now – change the copyright notice in the website’s footer. While it might seem like something that can wait, a current timestamp and copyright notice shows users (prospective and existing customers) that your business is currently active, functioning, operational. What would you do if you came upon a website with a footer that indicated the last time you were present was last year? While you may not leave, you... [...]

Travis Bliffen says, “For a long time people focused on optimizing only their website and doing so to rank in Google. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but if you haven’t learned by now, diversification is key if you are going to rely on organic traffic to promote your business. Generally when people talk about diversifying their online marketing, they are referring to using a combination of PPC, Social, Content Marketing, and SEO.Today we are going to look at how you can diversify your organic traffic sources so you can rest easy, even after one of the many Google updates that... [...]

Allison Howen says, “A new study by Content Analytics is shedding light on the attributes that increase product visibility on major e-commerce sites like Walmart.com and Amazon.The study, which analyzed more than 17,000 product pages, found that the most visible product listings on e-commerce sites are those that contain the complete search query in both the title and description, such as “moisturizing shampoo” or “cell phone cover.” In fact, the data found that products with the complete query in both the title and description ranked on either the first or second page of the search... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “Pinterest has released some interesting data on the performance of its Promoted Pins project.The social pinboard, which launched the Promoted Pins beta eight months ago, indicated that Promoted Pins perform just as well as (if not better than) organic pins, generating a 30 perent increase in “earned media” impressions from campaigns for advertisers. Pinterest also revealed that:– Promoted Pins perform long after a campaign ends. Since Pins are evergreen (available and, arguably relevant, forever), Pinterest saw an extra 5% bump in earned media in... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “Search engine marketing software WordStream has launched a performance grader for Bing Ads advertisers.The tool allows Bing advertisers to evaluate the relative strength and weakness of their search advertising accounts across several important metrics including click-through rate, wasted spend, negative keywords, landing page and text ad optimization, and well as what Wordstream considers best practices for the search advertising network”.Did Bing Ads Bring the Holiday Cheer?Website Magazine [...]

Allison Howen says, “AddThis is shedding light on 2014’s top social sharing trends.The content engagement tools provider conducted a year-end analysis, which reveals insights into the growth of the Web’s most popular social networks, global social sharing trends and mobile adoption across the globe.According to the data, 2014’s fastest growing social network outside of the U.S. is Korea-based Ketnooi, which saw a 55 percent year-over-year increase in sharing. The fastest growing social network in the U.S., however, is Pinterest, which saw a 15 percent year-over-year increase in sharing.... [...]

Derek S. says, “Today, consumers are demanding a personalized experience more than ever and merchants not delivering one will soon find themselves falling behind the competition.ShopKeep, a cloud-based technology provider to small and independent businesses, has recently announced a new integration with popular email marketing solution MailChimp.The new integration enables ShopKeep merchants to engage with their consumers through customized email messages that are based on insights from their purchasing behavior. In order to efficiently send personalized emails to each consumer ShopKeeper... [...]