I recently stumbled upon an useful infographic created by Digital Net Agency, a performance-based search agency with a concentration on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The infographic provides great insight into one of the most important aspects of paid search advertising, the Google Adwords Quality Score.

The Quality Score is essential for digital marketers to understand because it helps determine how much you have to pay to receive a position in the “sponsored” area of the search engine results page. You can optimize your Quality Score to receive a higher position for a lower bid that your competitors. Said another way, you’ll pay less money for more clicks and visibility. Therefore, it is important to understand and measure.

Quick summary of Google Adwords Quality Score factors:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Relative (CTR)
• Landing-page quality
• Keyword/search relevance
• Ad/site Performance
• Display URLs past CTR
• Account history
• Keyword/ad relevance
• Geographic performance
• Targeted devices

Focus on your “kewords, ads, and landing-page relevancy” and you can improve your Google Adwords Quality Score.

How to Improve Google Adwords Quality Scores Infographic:

Source: DigitalNetAgency.com

Consistent branding across your website, print, video, website, and social media accounts is essential in a modern world where consumers are hit with countless advertisements in a single day. It becomes even more difficult when each of those medium’s creative require different sizes, color, software, time, and expertise to produce. Take just publishing your logo on different social media profiles for example. You have to design different creative at a wide variety of sizes for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+.

Original Ginger, a “Digital Agency located in the heart of historic Fort Langley, a hip and artistic suburb of Vancouver BC”, created an infographic that quickly communicates the image sizes of each of the popular social media companies. Use this to work with your agency or have your design team prepare your creative so that you can have one look and feel to your brand across them all.

Quick Summary:

• Facebook Cover: 851 x 315
• Facebook Profile: 200 x 200
• Facebook App Boxes: 111 x 74
• Twitter Background: 2000 x 1200
• Twitter Profile: 128 x 128
• Twitter Company Header: 1200 x 600
• LinkedIn Profile: 200 x 200
• LinkedIn Company Banner: 640 x 220
• YouTube Avatar: 1600 x 1600
• YouTube Channel Background: 1500 x 2000 or 1200 x 2500
• Pinterest Avatar: 180 x 180
• Pinterest Image Max Width & Height: 554 & 5000
• Google+ Banner: 2120 x 1192 *UPDATED!
• Google+ Profile: 250 x 250
• Google+ Company Banner: 110 x 110

Social Media Image Sizing Guide Infographic:

Infographic by OriginalGinger.com

If you own a website or blog then naturally you should be monitoring whether it is accomplishing your goals or not. Of course, that’s easier said than done in today’s world of endless numbers.

Do you monitor your bounce rate, number of page views, sites referring your traffic, views on mobile, inbound links, outbound links, page rank? Well yes, but not necessarily every day. There are just too many numbers to consistently watch if you’re only one person. Even a team can have trouble distinguishing the nice-to-have from the need-to-have.

What’s important about these metrics is that they aren’t the end game. I don’t look at them and say “Oh, that’s nice.” They are a starting point and are worthless if you don’t use them to take a step deeper by asking questions. What was this number yesterday? Why is it so much higher or lower? What caused the spike or drop? Was their one or many causes?

The purpose of watching these numbers allows you to dive deeper and gain some real learnings. These metrics below allow you to do that.

Below are 3 key website metrics that I watch every day:

1. Daily Visits (Google Analytics) - Although you’re thinking this is an obvious choice, you’d be surprised at how it’s overlooked. This metric will tell you a lot about the trends of the people visiting your site. You’ll see what days your visitors primarily focus on. Some retail sites tend to see an uptick on the weekends. B2B companies have a skew towards the workdays. Dive in deeper to see what hours of your most popular days cause the most transactions or leads. Use this information to target your content to people on specific days or focus your advertising during those core purchase hours. Longer term, are your daily visits going up or down? If you’re consistently publishing new content and your visits are going down then you may be losing traction. Figure out which of these visits are new versus returning and gauge whether you’re being successful.
2. Search Queries (Google Webmaster Tools) - If you’re making an effort to increase your search engine rank in Google, Bing, or any other major search engine then you need to pay attention to your “Search Queries”. This metric showcases the most common search queries pointing to your site, as identified by Google. It allows you to see how many times your site is being found, being clicked on, and your average position. You can compare the queries driving to your site with the list of keywords you’re actually trying to rank against. This is a quick and easy way to judge the success of your SEO efforts.
3. Links to Your Site (Google Webmaster Tools) - The currency on the web is valuable outbound links to websites you value. With that in mind, you should be measuring how many websites are “voting” for you. Quality is much more important than quantity but this number should continuously be going up nevertheless. You should consistently be creating and promoting your content on relevant blogs, partner websites, and associations. Leverage your industry expertise in news articles and press releases. Promote your deals and discounts on social media sites like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Always link back to your site. Even better, link back to specific pages and deeper URLs.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of metrics that should be analyzed when optimizing a website and a business. Spend time to quarterly or yearly pull together a full analysis and competitive review of how you’re doing. Look into the path your visitors are taking, the pages that cause the biggest bounce rates, and the browsers most used by your local customers. But don’t get overwhelmed and ignore the key metrics that you should be focusing on daily. Keep yourself  informed quickly and easily by only looking a few.

What are your most important metrics?

If you’re looking for a quick and easy Marketing 100 class then look no further than this great infographic created by HubSpot and designed by BlueGlass.

Quick summary:

It’s amazing to see how marketing has transformed over the years and even more impressive is the rate in which a single message is distributed instantly to millions or billions of people. Starting with mass printing, the infographic moves you through the different mediums of posters, magazines, newspapers, and billboards. In 1922 radio advertising kicks in, followed a few decades later by television commercials in 1941. With the rise of telephones in most American’s homes, telemarketing becomes a common tactic. New technologies give rise to new means of communications with the personal computers and mobile phones but older mediums such as newspaper advertising still dominates. It’s not until 1990s that television overtakes newspapers as the largest ad spend. SMS messaging on mobile phones gets introduced in 1992 and twenty years later is still at it’s infancy. Internet advertising spikes in 1995-2002 as the dot-com bubble grows. Search engines jump onto the scene in 1995 and 1997. Do you remember AltaVista? Anyone? Search engine optimization (SEO) naturally follows, mostly defined by keyword stuffing and other on-page tweaks.  Google launches in 1998 and launches paid search marketing through Adwords. Blogging comes onto the scene in 1998 just before the bubble bursts in 2000. Email marketing becomes heavily abused by spammers and in 2003 the CAN-SPAM act is passed into law. Social media spreads in 2003 and 2004 with Myspace, LinkedIn, and Facebook. SEO becomes a common key-phrase claimed by every webmaster and developer in 2005 and on. Twitter launches in 2007 and doesn’t stop growing. Email marketing struggles to push through the spam filters and text message marketing begins to take shape. The shift starts to happen from batch blasts to creating valuable content that drives people to your business. Google launches G+ and continues to adjust it’s algorithm in 2011. Mobile, tablets, and hand-held devices are skyrocketing as computer towers and laptops sales drop. E-commerce becomes more personalized and marketers are able to target smarter and faster. According to the infographic online shoppers will reach 184.3 million, up 3.3% from 2011. What do you think will come next?

The History of Marketing

From: HubSpot Marketing Software

A recent infographic by Mogreet, a leader in mobile video and MMS messaging, stacks up the usage and engagement of SMS & MMS mobile communication against social media’s top players Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. They separate the two into what they call Narrowcast and Broadcast.

Narrowcasting is the sharing of information directly to its intended recipient, thereby breaking through all of the clutter. Broadcasting is the mass public sharing, such as a post or tweet. The infographic supports that you’re not only more likely to reach your audience but they’ll be more apt to respond when you do it. This conclusion is drawn from some very interesting statistics.

What does this mean for marketers?

SMS and MMS are powerful marketing tactics that can get your message directly to your audience and more importantly, they’ll see it. What is the average click rate of your last email? It’s unlikely it was above 15%. If it was, you’re part of the lucky minority. How many people viewed your Facebook page? Yes, you can see that now.  Tweets go by even faster. How many of those get a mention or retweet? According to the infographic, 98% of all SMS and MMS messages are opened. That’s a remarkable percentage and clearly demonstrates how much this medium is valued.

Build a Personal Touch-point with Your Loyal Customers

Recently I was talking with the owner of a small family restaurant in my area. They were experimenting with SMS messaging. At first, it was slow going collecting their customer’s information but after a while of asking nicely, displaying signs, and not abusing those already in the program, they started to get a good base of numbers. The owner has had great success with using this channel in a number of ways. In fact, it has become their primary means of communication that trumps email, social, and traditional advertising.

Here shows how they are using SMS messaging.

• Timely deals - Restaurants have predictable, and sometimes non-predictable, slow times that sack profit. Instead of making employees go home early, they send out a promotion offering a discount within the next few hours.
• Upcoming events - If you’re a local business then you know how valuable it is to be involved in the community. They announce where they’ll be and what they’ll be promoting. This is also a great way to include your partners and benefit from each others audiences.
• Special Announcements - Nobody can predict the future and sometimes weather or other events cause a change in regular business. They use the SMS channel to instantly inform their customers if they are closing early, not open on particular day, or a change in staff.

Below is the infographic titled “Is Bigger Always Better?”

Infographic by Mogreet

Originally posted by Go-Golf.com, a Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company. The entire post was valuable so it has been shared in full below. Thanks Go-Golf.com!

Did you Know

Global Online Population of 2,095,006,005 equals 30% of World’s Population.

Global Time Spent Online Per Month is 35,000,000,000 hours (35 Billion) which is equivalent to 3,995,444 years

US Internet user on average spends 32 hours on internet per month. This is double than the time spent by Global Internet user i.e. 16 hours per month.

Asia has the highest online population of 922,329,554 online users whereas North America has the highest online penetration rate of 78.90%

China has the highest number of Internet users 456,238,464 i.e 34.30% of its total population

Social networking is the most time consuming activity for an Internet user. A normal Internet user spends around 22% of its time on social networking sites, 21% on searches, 20% on reading content, 19% on emails and communication, 13% on multimedia sites and 5% on online shopping

92% of Internet users have used Internet for sending e-mails and for using search engines. 83% for getting more information related to health or hobbies. 82% for searching directions. 81% for getting weather information.78% for information on new products. 76% for reading news. 72% for entertainment and 71% for online shopping.

Google is the most visited web property online. Whereas, Facebook is the biggest time. A normal Facebook users spends around 7 hours, 45 minutes and 49 seconds per month on Facebook.

Some more Interesting Facts

More than 56% of Social Networking Users have used Social Networking Sites for spying on their partners.

Brazilians have the highest online friends averaging 481 friends per user, whereas Japanese have the least average of only 29 friends.

Chinese users spend the maximum time of more than 5 hours a week,in shopping online.

More than 1 Billion Search Queries per day on Google.

4 Billion views per day on Video Sharing Website YouTube. (Social Networking site)

Video content of more than 60 hours gets uploaded every minute onto YouTube.

More than 250 Million Tweets per day.

More than 800 Million updates on Facebook per day.

Location best services and Time Shifted TV will be the most popular trends of future with growth rate of 27% followed by Internet Banking growing at 19% per year.

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Dubai Web Design Company

Tasty Placement, a search engine optimization and digital design company, attempted to solve the question “Can social media activity boost organic search ranking?” with an experiment. This infographic is a result of that experiment and shows very interesting results. Although maybe not the most perfect experiment, it appears the answer is “Yes”.

Read more about this infographic from the great blog post by Mind Jumpers.

Summary, in order from least effective on SEO to most effective:

• 100 Google+ Followers yielded a 14.63 rise in search engine ranking position.
• 300 Google+ Votes yielded a 9.44 rise in search engine ranking position.
• 60 Facebook Shares & 50 resulting “Likes” yielded a 6.9 rise in search engine ranking position.
• 50 Tweets yielded a 2.88 rise in search engine ranking position.
• 1,000 Twitter followers yielded a 1.22 fall in search engine ranking position.

It’s no surprise that advertising professionals are advocates of social media. We research, test, and execute marketing campaigns on a daily basis and they design these campaigns with the purpose of delivering a message to a targeted group of prospects. Social media not only allows for highly targeted messaging but it’s extremely scalable. The message can be sent and re-sent by the recipients. This inherently viral component, along with the ability to measure it, makes it very appealing for use.

But are “Normal” or non-advertising professionals using it the same way? Are they as engaged on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest? Do they log the same amount of hours as the marketing managers?

This infographic by SF Heat provides some interesting insight into the difference.

Some interesting highlights:

• 92% of Ad Pros follow brands they like versus 33% of normal people.
• 61% of Ad Pros have a Google+ account versus 23% of normal people.
• 63% of Ad Pros “Strongly Agree” that companies should invest in social media with their customers versus 23% of normal people.

View the full infographic below, click to enlarge:

In the world of online marketing, pay-per-click campaigns are an advertising medium that marketers use on a regular basis. This method of marketing can provide a number of benefits to webmasters that you can’t find elsewhere. If you haven’t considered getting involved with this strategy, there are two advantages for using pay-per-click advertising. Before we get into these two advantages of this medium, lets explore what PPC is.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click is a marketing method that is primarily offered by search engines like Google. With this strategy, you sign-up for an account as an advertiser and then create an ad campaign. You come up with an ad, a link to your site and keywords that trigger the ad. You set the amount that you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. Then when someone types in a keyword that you have listed in your campaign, your ad will show up in the advertising section of the search engine results. If someone clicks on the ad, they are taken to your website. You then pay a fee for each person who clicks on one of the ads.

1) Pay-per-click works with your branding strategy by increasing traffic

One way that you could effectively use pay-per-click marketing is to increase the overall traffic to your website. Pay-per-click marketing can be a highly effective way to bring targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the niche that you are targeting, it may not be that expensive to get visitors to your site. The best part is that the people who come to your site from these ad campaigns are actively seeking what you have to offer. This means that you’re not just throwing money away to get people to your site who may or may not be interested in what you have to offer. This makes it more likely that you will be able to increase sales or conversions. However, the positive takeaway you can count on is the brand awareness associated with starting a pay per click campaign.

2) Pay-per-click is effective for conversion testing that increase sales

Another advantage when it comes to taking advantage of pay-per-click marketing is to use the traffic to test your regular site pages or sales pages. If you are building a new site, it probably doesn’t have much weight with the search engines yet. This makes it difficult to get any traffic to the site. Without traffic, it can be difficult to tell if what you are doing is actually working or even something that people will purchase. By purchasing some traffic for the site with pay-per-click marketing, you can get a lot of people there quickly, so you can see if your design actually works and whether your market is actively seeking to purchase your product or service.

Something Important To Consider

When it comes to using pay-per-click marketing, you can definitely get results quickly. However, you have to be careful that you don’t spend too much money with this technique. If you set your daily budget too high, you could end up paying a very big bill for all of the traffic that you get. Make sure and set a spending daily spending limit to your campaign. And remember, Google may go above that limit in any given day but it will offset the over spending less in another given day. Google does this in order to try and maximize your click through ratio.

Google has been one of the leading forces in the search engine industry for several years now and it seems like everything they do tends to set the trend for other search engines. Over the years, they have implemented several new algorithm changes that have effectively slapped webmasters down the rankings when they engaged in things Google didn’t approve of. The latest Google slap dealt with individuals who used unnatural linking practices to achieve higher rankings. Many webmasters in this category have been negatively affected and are unsure of where to turn from here.

Blog Networks

Many webmasters were using blog networks as a way to achieve high rankings in the search engines. A blog network is a system that people pay to be a part of. Once an individual is a member, he can write short articles and include a link back to his own site within the article. Then when he submits the article to the blog network, it is posted on one of the blogs owned by the network. The blogs are all high PageRank sites and they try to give the impression that they are legitimate sites. This made it look like a page on the webmaster’s site was being linked to by one of the blog sites in the network, which usually helped improve its ranking. Recently, Google decided to de-index many of these networks, which also affected all of the sites that the blogs were linking to.

Notification

Webmasters who engage in unnatural linking practices recently started receiving notices from Google in their Webmaster Tools account messages. The message tells the Webmasters that Google has detected unnatural linking practices associated with their sites and that something must be done to fix this issue within in a certain amount of time.

Affect of Unnatural Links

There has been some confusion and debate about the impact of having these types of links associated with your account. At the very least, Google has discounted these links and made it so that they do not carry any weight in helping other sites rank. In some cases, webmasters claim that having these links actually lead to some sort of punishment by Google. Many of their pages went way down in the search engine rankings and some of them were actually removed completely from Google’s index. Regardless of whether the bad links just lost their value or actually ended up leading to punishment, they definitely had an impact on search engine rankings.

What to Do

If you are a webmaster and engaged in something that Google considers to be unnatural linking practices, you should do your best to alter toxic links as soon as you can by either changing the anchor text or removing them completely. Go through your inbound links report and remove any links that come from questionable websites. While it might be a lot of work, it will help your search engine rankings rise again. This recent act by Google proves that nothing beats high quality, contextual link building strategies to further your site in the search engine results.