Targeting Nostalgic Consumers is an interesting post over on Small Business Trends. While the post is mostly aimed at small business people who might be likely to produce or retail nostalgic items there’s no reason why it isn’t something that affiliate marketers should be targeting too.
Recently Google introduced Universal Search. I’m sure you will have noticed it by now if you’ve been searching on Google. Instead of just returning web pages in the results pages Google now includes video, maps, images and other search verticals as well.
The impact on people who have been looking for information on Google has been interesting and it seems that eye-tracking studies have now found that the video and image thumbnails are attracting more interest than perhaps the top listing is.
There are some lessons there for affiliate marketers who are always striving to get to the top of the results pages … and there’s a lesson there for Google too. Expect to see a change in the way Google displays it’s Adwords advertising on the results pages sometime soon.
A hat tip to Small Business SEM and the post on the recent Search Engine Strategies - SES: 14 Takeaways
Why do people search online? You’ll find some interesting figures here
My thanks to Search Engine Land for the lead to the research paper
Have you tried geotargeting yet? There are a few merchants out there who provide some form of geotargeting in the creatives that they provide but, if you’re like me, you may think that it’s not all that effective.
I know in my situation every time I see a geotargeted ad on a page I’m visiting I’m supposed to be sitting in a town I’ve either never heard of or is so far away that it makes me want to laugh instead of buy something.
If you want to know more about geotargeting then you’ll find this article interesting and there are a couple of links in the article and down in the comments that are definitely worth following.
Internet users can be a fickle lot; sometimes they’re here and sometimes they’re somewhere else. Some sites are hot and then they’re cold and social media seems to make the situation worse.
But is that really the way things are going?
A recent study by Nielsen/Net Ratings has shown that over the last four years there has been a steady shift in what surfers are doing online. Four years ago 46% of an internet user’s time online was spent in communication. These days 47% of an internet user’s time online is spent visiting content sites.
You can find more interesting statistics about Internet usage here
Have you wondered about search engine friendly urls? There are some around who suggest that in the future it won’t matter what your URL looks like … but we’re not there yet. That’s why you should read this interview with Matt McGee - you should find it helpful.
Sometimes Bloglines really annoys me when it can’t seem to remember what I’ve read and what I haven’t but then other times I love it because it holds on to old stuff that I haven’t read and some of those old entries are absolute gems.
Here’s one I found buried in my reader today. If you live or die by affiliate marketing then you really need to read How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution
Let’s forget the pretty pictures and solid sales text that you’ve got on your site for just a moment. Instead let’s look behind the gloss and glamour and see what you’re directory structure on your site looks like.
Is it neat, logical and does it include search engine friendly directory and file names? If it isn’t like that then you should spend some time reading Web Analytic Pilots from Hell - 7 Maddening Site Mistakes
I’m a firm believer in the idea that the language of selling can vary depending on the person you’re selling to. I’m not even sure that the fundamentals stay the same in all situations.
So what language do you use when you’re trying to sell a product online? Who are you talking to? Is it really the person who might be interested in buying your product or do you use a generic language to sell all your products to all your potential customers?
If you were selling a business to business product would your language be the same as if you were selling something to a consumer?
And how much effort do you put in to combining the web design to the language that you’re using?
SEO with Usability: What the People Want is more than just a piece about search engine optimisation. It will encourage you to think about the language you should use on your websites when you are trying to sell something.
The host you use for your sites can tell others a lot about your business. It can be a window that allows people like Google to look in and see all those things you would rather they didn’t know.
It’s not that long ago that Matt Cutts stood up at a Q&A session at a major search engine conference and was able to associate a very clean site he had been asked about with a bunch of spammy sites one guy happened to be running so how clear is the window Google is using to look into your business?
If you’re using a host that requires you to pay through Google Checkout then the window is probably a whole lot less opaque than you thought and you’ll find Google Gains Access to Web Hosting Financial Records something that will make you think.
