Creating a robust web presence is important now more than ever. A website with top of the line graphics, enough flash to slow even a 15mbps download speed, won’t do you much good if you can’t target clients and increase qualified traffic.

So how do you do this? Create a client-serving site rather than a self-serving site

Start by developing relevant content. Providing value through your content will keep users on your site and show them your worth to their business. Research and get inside your potential client’s thought process.

What are they looking for? How can you solve their problems better than your competition?

Too often, companies focus on what they can do rather than what they can do for potential clients. There is a subtle but important distinction between these statements, and clients can tell the difference.

Next, make your site less complex. Focus on site functionality rather than flashy, complicated set-ups that look cool superficially, but ultimately distract viewers from their purpose. A site that is easy to navigate will result in more page views and more conversions than their flashy counterparts.

Finally, connect with potential clients in the environments they already frequent – like social media sites. The website is no longer the center of the internet universe. It is merely a part of a larger – more fluid – structure where social media sites and search engines connect users to valuable content.

Use this to your advantage by bringing potential clients to your site through social networks. One way to do this is by using social media sites to distribute your site’s content. Create daily blog posts and use Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. to deliver traffic to your site.

Be sure to deliver valuable content and not a transparent sales pitch. Again, clients can see the difference. If the content you create is valuable and targeted to potential clients they will view more pages and – hopefully- invest in your services or buy your products.

Google Labs is an experimental branch of Google and Gmail where engineers test out wild and crazy ideas and solicit feedback from users who try out the experiments. Note, Google Labs is just the first phase of an extensive product development process, so the experiments are not guaranteed to make it onto Google.com

Below are a list of 6 Google Lab Experiments and Settings that are worth trying out. These settings are not only creative, but also very useful.

Google Labs Experiments

1. Google Social Search allows you to more easily find blogs, reviews and other public content from your Gmail chat contacts and your broader social circle as well.

2. Google Trends allows you to enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google. The experiment also shows how frequently your topics appear in Google News stories and the geographic regions where the stories are being searched.

Trends also analyzes a portion of Google searches to calculate how many searches have been made on the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.

In addition, Hot Trends allows you to see a snapshot of fast-rising searches for different points of time. The iGoogle Gadget even allows you to track these viral trends in iGoogle.

Gmail Labs Settings

3. Undo Send enables you to stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after you hit the send button. There  is only a short time window, but it is definitely useful for those situations when you realize right away that you need to unsend a message.

4. Don’t Forget Bob is another cool Gmail setting. This setting suggests more people for you to include in an email list based on the groups of contacts you email most often. It prevents you from accidently leaving someone off of an important email.

5. Forgotten Attachment Detector prevents you from sending messages without attaching relevant attachments. This setting prompts you to attach a file when you’ve mentioned an attachment, but forgotten to add it.

6. Multiple Inboxes is similar to Twitter lists, in that it allows you to add extra email lists to your inbox. The new threads can be based on labels, starred messages, drafts or any search you want. For example, you can create separate inboxes for coworkers, friends and coupons.  Categorizing your inbox in this way will reduce clutter and increase efficiency.

These settings are just a few of the great options Google has to personalize your email experience. To access Gmail Lab Settings, simply click the green lab flask in the right corner of your Gmail page next to the Settings and Help icons and enable the settings you find useful.

This week Google reps revealed the latest development in their search portfolio — social search. This latest feature displays social search results at the bottom of the search results page.

Users can access this feature in the Google Labs section of their Google account. Once activated, Google pulls their social circle from their Google profile. The results display relevant data retrieved real-time from their social networks.

When designing the feature, Google was careful to protect users’ rights – they will only pull information users’ choose to include on their Google profile. Google gives users the option to individually add the social networks they want included in their profiles and thus their social search.

Right now, Google has a contract to include Twitter posts in the social search results, but I wouldn’t be surprised if additional social networking platforms will follow in coming months.

Social Search Result:

Google results also allow users to see how they are connected to the social search results. For example, I did a social search for “Chicago Marketing” and the first result to appear is jslchicago – connected to his Twitter page via Gmail.

Google’s social search allows results to appear in real-time and without violating users’ privacy. Their strict parameters of choice and transparency ensure that users only share the information they choose to share.

Here’s an in-depth demo from Google:

I tried several social searches and was very impressed with the results I saw. It combines the granular search of Google with the real-time aspects of Twitter.

The fact that it only pulls information from users social networks ensures that the data users get in their queries is from a known source – not just another random insight from an unknown “expert.” Well done Google.

Your Google Adwords Quality Score can not only dictate how successful your campaign will be, but also how much money you need to spend to be successful.

So what is Quality Score? (as defined by Google)

“The AdWords system calculates a ‘Quality Score’ for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).”

How is it used? (as defined by Google)

“Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network . The AdWords system works best for everybody — advertisers, users, publishers, and Google too — when the ads we display match our users’ needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.”

This diagram demonstrates how an ad with a high Quality Score can place above an ad with a higher bid and a lower Quality Score

Quality Score influences your keywords and actual cost-per-click (CPC), estimates the first page bids that you see in your account and determines if a keyword is qualified to enter the ad auction that occurs every time a user enters a search query. Basically, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the higher your Ad Rank (or ad position.) To see how Google does this, watch our recent SEM Minute on Quality Score.

How do you get a high Quality Score?

One way to ensure a high quality score is to create relevant keyword lists, ad copy and landing pages that work together to create a fluid, search-engine-friendly campaign. All of these aspects come together to create a high Quality Score. For a great visual representation of this, see a great blog post on SearchEngineLand.

Let’s start with relevant ad copy. Ad copy is the content that appears below the headline of your ad in the SERPs. It should be uniquely adapted to each Ad Group and targeted to include relevant keywords.  Google will see that the ad copy is relevant to the search terms and will rate it accordingly.

In the same way, keywords need to be relevant because they link the search terms to the ad copy and the landing page. If Google does not see the inherent connection between the different parts of the campaign, it will be reflected in your quality score.

Another important thought to remember is that Google Quality Score is a robot; it does not think like a human. It cannot connect terms based on innuendos or superior-thought. It is based on algorithms and relevant terminology.

That being said, you should build your landing page to reflect this fact. The landing page should contain words found in both the query and the ad copy and it should be built out in a way that is easy for Google to understand. Use proper headings and h1, h2 and h3 tags. Search Engine Journal recently wrote a great article on landing pages—definitely check it out if you need a more detailed description on landing pages.

One way to test that your site is built properly is to try the W3 semantic extractor. This will pull out content from your site in the same way that Google Bots do, so you can verify that the bots understand your site structure.

Another important way to guarantee a high quality score is to link to a targeted landing page rather than the homepage of your company’s site. Homepage’s often contain genera company information, whereas landing pages reflect unique search terms and Ad Groups.

A PPC Campaign is the sum of all its parts and this is best represented in the Google Quality Score. If you design your campaign thoroughly and follow up with continual optimization, a high Quality Score will take care of itself.

CTIA Wireless—The Wireless Association recently released the Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey Results that may have significant implications for the mobile marketing industry.

The survey results indicate that more than 246 million data-capable devices are in use by consumers and more than 40 million of these devices are Smartphones or wireless-enabled PDAs.

PDAs and Smartphones function like a computer in your pocket, so there are endless opportunities for display and search ads. This provides a huge opportunity for marketers because mobile marketing is still largely untapped by the general marketing industry.

The possibilities don’t end there, SMS marketing is sure to be a growing facet of the industry in coming years as well. During the first half of 2009, 740 billion text messages were sent on carriers’ networks—this breaks down to roughly 4.1 billion messages per day.

A growing segment of the population is communicating via text message, and it’s a way for marketers to provide targeted messages directly to consumers without the noise that can be found in over-crowded email inboxes.

As of June 2009, the industry survey recorded more than 276 million wireless users, which represents a year-over-year increase of nearly 14 million subscribers. We are not seeing this type of growth in any other segment of the American or Global industry.

While mobile marketing is still in its infancy, it presents a huge opportunity for marketers. Those that jump on the mobile bandwagon first will not only gain vital experience, but also valuable market share. With the recession shifting marketing spend from traditional to interactive platforms, I think mobile marketing has a fair shot at absorbing some of the shift.

Going into effect Dec. 1, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will require bloggers to disclose any compensation they receive from companies in exchange for reviewing products on their blogs.

This comes about in response to the growing practice of marketers soliciting popular bloggers to endorse their products for payment or freebies.

Up until now this practice has been like the fabled wolf hidden in sheep’s clothing. Essentially, marketers use bloggers to advertise their products under the guise of being unendorsed ‘user-generated content,’ when in reality it is basically paid advertising just like banner ads and text ads in the SERPs.

This is the first time the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials in almost 30 years. With the origins of the content available for all to see, it will be interesting to see how this affects the blogging community. Will it reduce blogger credibility? Or reduce the practice of paid blog content altogether?

Webinars can be an excellent tool to share success stories with potential clients, exchange ideas with industry peers and address the challenges facing your industry. That being said, like any tool, it has to be used effectively to be successful.

Here is a short list of Webinar DOs and DON’Ts that can help you develop your next webinar.

DON’T: Use Catchy — But Irrelevant — Titles

There is nothing more disappointing than expecting the DeLorean and getting an AMC Pacer. Don’t use industry buzz words just because they are hot on the search engines and social media networks.

People want to get what they came for. If your title is not an accurate description of the presentation, you will disappoint your audience and fail to pull in a targeted, niche audience interested in the presentation you actually deliver.

DO: Develop Keyword-rich, Relevant Titles

There is nothing wrong with choosing buzz words that are sure to draw in tons of viewers, but choose relevant words that summarize the topic your webinar will cover.

Managing the expectations of your audience with a good title will help you deliver an informative webinar that is useful to your viewers.

DON’T: Talk in Circles

There is nothing more frustrating for an audience than listening to a long tangent that goes on in circles, but goes nowhere.

For Example:

“We have long-term goals of achieving our objectives and we have put strategies in place that will help us to reach them within a time period that we have previously set for ourselves.”

That statement is about as informative as a beauty queen’s plan to end world hunger and achieve world peace. It provides no tangible information that is useful to the audience. Unfortunately, this is often the type of meaningless jargon used in many webinars — don’t let yours be one of them!

DO: Provide Concrete Explanations

Webinars give you the opportunity to address important issues and provide effective solutions for your viewers. While you don’t have to give away all of your secrets, you have to give them something worthwhile to keep them coming back for more.

DON’T: Exaggerate Success Stories

Don’t make the mistake of saying you caught a whale when in reality you caught a guppy. Sure bending the truth makes for a good pitch, but when your audience researches your story and can’t find any facts to back it up; your credibility goes out the window.

In today’s world, it’s far too easy for viewers to open up Google in another tab and research your story on their own, so it’s best to stick to the truth.

DO: Include Factual Success Stories

Don’t shy away from a success story just because your website isn’t ranked at the top of the SERPs.

If you developed an SEO campaign for a new client and helped them jump from the 10^th page in the SERPs to the 5^th in only a couple of months, then by all means include it. Just don’t make it out to be something it’s not.

The truth is far more compelling than a lie that can be easily discredited.

Follow these guidelines and you will have a great opportunity to share success stories with potential clients, exchange ideas with industry peers and address the many challenges facing your industry.

There are hundreds of factors that contribute to your search rankings on the engines. Developing effective SEO campaigns can help ensure that your page receives highly-qualified traffic on the search engines.

A lot of marketers use the same rules for developing Google and Yahoo SEM campaigns, but this is one of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make.

The two search engines have significant differences that require individualized search marketing campaigns because what works in Google may not work in Yahoo.

Nowsourcing.com put together a great list of Yahoo Search Marketing Best Practices that is a useful tool for marketers using Yahoo’s platform for their campaigns. Here are a few best practices for Yahoo:

Ad Group Organization:

Ad groups should be based on similarity of keywords and keyword volume. For example, campaigns should be broken down into ad groups of “car colors,” and ad groups should be broken down into “High Volume Car Colors” and “Low Volume Car Colors.” This structure allows Yahoo to better rank keywords for your site.

Ad Copy:

Unlike Google’s 25 character limit, Yahoo allows for 40 character headlines. This gives you more space to create compelling ad copy that encourages searchers to click on your site. Use action verbs like “buy”, “save” and “order” to call searchers to action.

Headlines play a critical role in driving long-term traffic to your site, so be sure to stay away from purely creative headlines and use optimized headlines that drive long-term traffic to your site.

Landing Page:

Keyword-rich landing pages are crucial to effective SEO on Yahoo. Yahoo will give your ads higher-quality scores if all the keywords in an ad group have a keyword-based landing page. Having a high-quality score will increase your conversion rate and improve your overall ROI.

For a complete list of Yahoo Search Marketing Best Practices, visit nowsourcing.com.

Razorfish recently released “Fluent.” The report discusses social influence marketing (SIM) and the influence various peer circles have over customer purchasing decisions. They define Social Influence Marketing as, “employing social media and social influencers to achieve the marketing and business needs of an organization.”

The report also featured a study conducted by Razorfish that demonstrates how trust plays a crucial role in influencing a consumer’s interest in purchasing an item.

The study analyzed peer influence and networks in conjunction with a more traditional media mix of expert reviews, search listings and advertisements to determine how and where trust comes into play during the purchasing process.

Findings:

#1: Where’s the trust?

When asked whom they trust most when making specific product purchasing decisions, participants indicated near or complete trust with offline friends (73 percent) followed closely by TV ads (52 percent) and expert online reviews (47 percent).

Social network ads come in next with 42 percent of respondents indicating some level of trust, while online friends and online video ads only register around 10 percent over complete distrust.

Online banner ad data reflects an almost equal distribution between distrust, neutrality and trust, while search engine results lean almost entirely toward strong to complete distrust.

#2: What factors affect trust?

When making purchase decisions, respondents indicated they turn to peers when looking for product information and recommendations rather than specific brand recommendations.

This was followed by general reassurance about their purchasing decisions and merchant recommendations. 86 percent of users concluded that whom they trust is dependent of the type of product, and 72 percent stated the cost of the product is the biggest factor affecting whom they trust.

#3: How authentic or believable are brands in various advertising media?

A majority of respondents felt that TV and print (magazines and newspapers) represented brands the most authentically, while all other media advertising categories (radio, mobile, online banners, blogs and social networks) were inauthentic.

While radio and social networks were on the border of authenticity, mobile and other online sources lagged far behind. A high level of indifference is also of significance among respondents.

This data indicates a huge chance for brands to redefine various mediums of online advertising and create new opportunities for consumer trust and engagement.

#4: Small numbers visit social shopping sites, but they have a big influence

While only 18 percent of respondents indicated they have visited a social shopping site, 69 percent of those have made at least one purchase based on a recommendation they came across on the site. In fact, nearly 25 percent of social shopping site visitors made at least three purchases based on site recommendations.

Study Implications

• As the lines blur between the online and offline spheres of influence, brands must stop viewing the role of influence as fragmented by the channel, platform or location of that influence and see it in a holistic light.
• Influence revolves around products and services — not necessarily brand affiliation. This means that brands should practice SIM, and focus on the influence customers have over each other when making product purchasing decisions.
• While the digital space holds an infinite amount of possibility for marketers, currently brands lack significant credibility in this realm. That being said, it also gives marketers a lot of room to develop the space and utilize creative techniques to enhance their influence online.

The goal of SIM is to recognize, account and tap into the sphere of influence that affects your customer base. As customers make purchasing decisions, they are constantly being influenced by those around them — both online and off— so an effective SIM marketing strategy requires a campaign to reach out to each individual’s social influencers throughout the purchasing process.

User Centric, Inc conducted an eye-tracking study that established Bing’s platform is more effective for ads than Google’s.

The study tracked the eye movements of 21 participants as they conducted search tasks in each engine. Roughly 42% of the participants look at Bing ads after each search, compared to only 25% of participants at a Google search results page.

Below is a full description of the results from User Centric, Inc’s press release:

Distribution of attention on Google vs. Bing:
• Google and Bing did not differ in terms of the amount of attention on the organic search results. In each search, all participants looked at the organic search results, spending an average of 7 seconds in that area.

• Attention on the sponsored links located above the organic results was similarly high for both Bing and Google. Over 90% of participants looked in that area during each search. As expected, during transactional searches, participants would spend more time looking at the sponsored results on top (~2.5 seconds) than they did on informational searches (~1.5 seconds).

• However, sponsored links on the right attracted more attention on Bing (~42% of participants per search) than they did on Google (~25% of participants per search). The participants who fixated on these links spent approximately 2.5 seconds looking at the area during transactional searches and 2 seconds during informational searches. These times were similar for the two search engines.

• Another difference between Bing and Google involved related searches. On Bing, related searches are shown on the left, right below the categories, while on Google, related searches are below the organic search results, towards the bottom of the page. Bing’s related searches had a much higher visibility than Google’s, attracting the attention of 31% of participants per search. Google’s related searches attracted the attention of only 5% of participants per search.

User Centric also investigated three additional features that differentiate Bing from Google: Flyouts that appear when users hover over individual search results, a category list displayed on the left, and sponsored links at the bottom of the search results page.

• Most participants (67%) triggered a flyout at least once during the study, which shows that they are easily activated. Nearly all of these activations were categorized as accidental because participant’s attention was away from the mouse pointer which triggered the flyout. Usually, the sudden appearance of an element in the visual field attracts attention but this was not the case in this study. Only 14% of participants (a quarter of those who activated at least one flyout) looked at the flyouts. Users’ tendency to ignore the flyouts was likely a result of the learned strategy to devalue motion as a source of information on the Web. This behavior may be compared to “banner blindness.

• Bing’s categories displayed on the left attracted much more attention than the flyouts. Half of the participants discovered the categories and three participants even selected a category to refine their search. Each of these three participants chose to use the categories on subsequent searches, which suggests potential value.

• The sponsored links at the bottom of the search results page did not generate any attention. None of the 21 participants looked at the bottom links on any of the four searches. This does not mean that users never look at the bottom sponsored links. Rather, the incidence rate of this behavior may be too low to detect with our sample size.

This study represents preliminary research on the user experience associated with the Bing search engine. User Centric plans to further investigate the discoverability of flyouts and their value proposition in users’ search behaviors, as well as other sections of Bing, such as Images, Videos, and News.