In our recent post on almost free SEO tools, we mentioned a simple Google Chrome extension called SEO Site Tools. Today, we’re going to take a look at all of the valuable tools that SEO Site Tools utilizes and how you can use the information to research your competitors and improve your website’s search optimization.

How to Use SEO Site Tools for Google Chrome

First off, if you don’t have Google Chrome installed, you can download it for free…

Increasing direct E-commerce sales via mobile devices has been a huge focus in recent years within the world of big retail and the mobile phone industry. With the ubiquitous distribution of smart phones and devices providing constant connectivity to end users coupled with the ability to potentially track, target and incentivise end users, the possibilities for m-commerce are endless and the Infographic below shows some interesting data about the rise of this mobile commerce…

The design and development experts at Branded3 have launched a fantastic newly-designed free reminder service for Interflora, focusing heavily on usability and user experience.

Dedicated to reminding users of upcoming birthdays, anniversaries and other special dates; myReminders will not only boost Interflora’s conversion rates, but offers customers a valuable service.

The site; which launched this week; allows users to add reminders and receive an SMS or an email (or both!) on a selected date…

Your FAQ page represents one of the most valuable moments in a conversion funnel. Nowhere else does a visitor so deliberately indicate that they want to know the details of your service.

Are you guilty of neglecting this important page? A page, that when given the proper attention, can actually boost your conversions and more importantly:

SALES!

Well if you are guilty of this terrible neglect, then here is the short answer:

You can improve your FAQ pages by…

• Streamlining navigation through questions
• Prioritizing clarity over precision in language
• Connecting the answers in FAQs to other steps in the sales funnel so that no visitor goes uncaptured

But as we all know, the devil is in the details…

One of the things that the new Facebook pages design makes obvious above all others is the lack of updates on a Facebook page. While updating your Facebook page on Facebook itself is recommended, many businesses will still prefer to use a social media management tool for the sake of productivity and ease of use. This post will show you six tools that social media experts and marketing agencies use to update their Facebook pages…

Forget Linsanity, there’s now Pinsanity on the internet. Astounding growth has led to wide media coverage and tons of articles, blogs and videos about this new social network (or social web). Some say that it’s tapped into what other social networks have done so well: getting people to share and communicate while also helping them discover instead of search. Techies call it a Delicious for photos…

Last December, we hosted a webinar on “Reaching your Goals with Google Analytics.” For those of you who weren’t able to make it last time, we’re pleased to offer this live webinar again. If you want to use Google Analytics to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns, including AdWords and other digital media, then this webinar is for you:

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Google Analytics
Date: Wednesday, March 21
Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT

Sign up here! (Note: this webinar page also includes links for many other great Google webinars; you can also go directly to the registration page…

On the 25th of January 2012 the European Commission published a proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation to replace the existing EU Data Protection Directive. The proposal set sets out a general data protection framework aimed at unifying the current differing data protection rules in the EU.  A brief summary of the major changes this will make to EU data protection law is set out below.

One Data Protection Authority

Processing of personal data by businesses established in more than one EU country will be monitored by one single data processing authority (DPA) – the “lead authority”…

We all know these days that a good marketing strategy always includes a digital component…like email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest.

And we all also know that a good digital marketing strategy must be measured and monitored with analytics.

But there are literally hundreds of choices you have to make. Unfortunately, you probably don’t know which ones to choose…so you close your eyes and pick…

KLOUT seem to have done a fairly good job (certainly from a marketing perspective) of getting themselves known as one of the places to check for a high level view of someone’s “Online Influence”.

There are many sophisticated online tools which can analyse, report and evaluate influence within your own social networks or even outwith your network. Each system has its own approach and algorithm for measuring Influence and they all vary in the way they report back on Influence metrics…

Is there anything in the analytics space that is so full of promise and hype and sexiness and possible awesomeness than "big data?" I don't think so.

So what is big data really? No one quite knows.

As I interpret it, big data is the collection of massive databases of structured and unstructured data. The data sources include traditional (now considered puny) sources like corporate ERP/CRM systems and non-traditional (massive) sources like every technical ping from every human or mechanical sensor, all web behavior by everyone across the entire Internet, increasingly digital data from analog sources like hospitals or the atmosphere, and (good lord!) our collective tweeted wisdom…

Since we launched Multi-Channel Funnels, we’ve seen marketers gain new insight into how marketing channels are working together to bring valuable customers to your site. For example, Technologia, a leading business training company in Montreal, recently partnered with online strategy firm Adviso and used Multi-Channel Funnels to understand the full path to conversion and improve their marketing efforts; read this customer story here…

When setting up a business, most of the important requirements are carefully planned out. It’s seen to it that a proper plan is put into action, the right employees are hired, the required funds are available, etc. But one important ingredient many businesses miss out on, is building a company culture.

Many people assume that just giving the staff reasonable wages, benefits and instructions should be sufficient, but this isn’t enough…

Ah, the hard drive. What was once viewed as the most reliable storage medium in the world has quickly become known as a disaster to many professionals who have witnessed, with great outrage and despair, as their hard drive has simply stopped spinning. That impenetrable force of data storage is often reduced to a dull, infuriating “click” sound, and there’s really nothing anyone can do to recover the data that is forever lost in this contraption…

We are excited to announce more ways you can share insights through Google Analytics. We have upgraded the existing custom report sharing, plus added the ability for you to share advanced segments and dashboards with other Analytics users.

To try this out, look for the Share button in any of these sections:

• Custom Report: In the Actions menu on the table that lists your reports.
• Dashboard: In the top-left corner over your dashboard…

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we will be talking about the inbound marketing funnel. All too often basic web analytics can mislead marketers which can lead to investing in the wrong channels. Understanding what content drives people to your site and when will allow you to make much more informed decisions on where to invest your money.

Thanks for joining us and don't forget to leave your comments below…

Every SaaS application has a funnel. Landing page, maybe a demo or pricing page, and then sign up. Qualified leads will stop by your “Plans and Pricing” page to make an informed decision. If you owned a car dealership, would you fill your showroom with stray dogs and blasting loud music? Well, too many startup founders, product managers, and user experience designers are letting the dogs and loud music run wild…

Tips for buying website traffic

We have just added Buying Website Traffic to our Video Guides. If you are advertising online and buying traffic, or perhaps considering it for the future, you might want to spend a few minutes watching the video to refresh on the best practice steps that you should put in place. Even if you enagage a third party agency to help you spend your precious ad budget it makes sense to get yourself familiar with the fundamentals – after all, the very fact that you have some knowledge should encourage them to give your account the best of attention!

Traffic has of course been bought in one form or another since the very earliest days of the internet however the increasing sophistication and choice available to advertisers means that selecting the right type of advertising and using it efficiently and effectively is key – because if you don’t your competitors surely will…

It doesn’t matter on the size of your budget – there are a few techniques and tips to be aware of and so take some time to consider the variety of platforms available – some will definately be more appropriate than others for your particular business and objectives…

Whenever you are working on search engine optimization for your own business or for a client’s, you will need some tools. If you have the budget, you can certainly pay for the best SEO tools the Internet has to offer, but if you don’t, then free and freemium tools are the alternative.

Free tools are just that – free to use as much as you want for any of your projects. Freemium tools, on the other hand, have both free and premium rate plans based on your needs…

Here at Branded3, we get access to a lot of client’s web analytics accounts and have a lot of information across a number of different sectors. We are constantly looking for ways to present data and analyse how traffic is being affected by our campaigns or by other outside factors.

Recently, we have been seeing quite a shift across a number of clients in terms of the amount of Google traffic coming through brand-related terms…

This week is Data Driven Business Week in San Francisco. In the spirit of making data-driven decisions, check out these 2 fun sites to test your “gut feel.”

Which Test Won

If you’ve been reading Get Elastic for any length of time, you know I love this site. Every week a new A/B test is posted (you can subscribe by email) for your voting pleasure.

ConversionSkills

This is a new site, and rather than weekly installments, it’s a quiz-like assessment of your conversion prediction skills…

If you run a Software as a Service (SaaS) company, then the sign up page is generally the most important barrier to conquer. If you can get it right, you’re on your way to growing your business at a much more accelerated rate. If you get it wrong,…well you’ll have to keep chipping away at it.

In this post we’re going to look at 8 sign up pages that are a breeze to fill out. Hopefully, after reading this post you’ll be inspired to rethink your sign up process…

“Test and Target” is the way to success – especially in e-mail marketing where you can get results especially fast. Nevertheless, some e-mail marketing tools still make testing an overly tedious affair. So before you decide on a tool for your company, make sure it comes with these six testing features.

After six years of creating countless newsletters and other e-mail campaigns, I have come to the conclusion that, apart from the “basic e-mail marketing stuff”, it is really hard if not impossible to predict what makes your e-mail message perform better…

As some of you may have noticed, since approximately 2pm PST this Monday, March 5th, there’s been a delay for statistics reported in AdWords, AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers. While the reports are delayed, whether you are an AdWords advertiser or an AdSense or DoubleClick publisher, your ads are serving as usual, with no disruptions. This is a result of a temporary technical issue with our “statistics pipeline” (this is the system that translates the raw data into meaningful and actionable metrics for you)…

Images not only add life to a website, they also make it convert better. People no longer want to browse a website – they want to experience it. Using the right images can boost your site’s conversions and get you to connect better with your target audience.

However, you still find many websites unaware of the importance of images when it comes to getting the most out of the existing traffic…

Google Analytics – one of the most powerful tools for any SEO, assuming you know how to get the data you need from it. One of my favorite things about Google Analytics is how many tools that put at your disposal for quickly analyzing the data you care most about. But again, that all assumes you know how to get it.

A custom report in Google Analytics is similar to their custom dashboard features in a lot of ways…

At Google, one of our goals is to help make the web work for your business. Today we’re introducing the Learn with Google webinar program that does just that, by sharing best practices and tips across a variety of products, including search ads, mobile ads, display ads, YouTube and Google Analytics. We’re kicking off the program with eight live webinars in March:

• March 13 at 10am PDT: 5 Tips to Start Marketing your Business with Video
• March 14 at 10am PDT: Introduction to the Google Display Network
• March 15 at 10am PDT: GoMo: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising
• March 20 at 10am PDT: Understanding Mobile Ads Across Marketing Objectives
• March 21 at 10am PDT: Reaching Your Goals with Google Analytics
• March 22 at 10am PDT: GoMo for Publishers
• March 27 at 10am PDT: Manage Large AdWords Campaigns with Less Effort
• March 28 at 10am PDT: 3 Tips to Get More out of your Video Advertising Campaigns

Check out our new webinar page to register for any of the sessions or to access on-demand webinars…

The new Facebook pages design with Timeline have arrived. Regardless of whether you like it or not, the changes are coming – it is best to prepare for them as soon as possible so your Timeline will be ready to shine. The following are 28 things you need to know about the new Facebook pages, including using the preview, timeline cover rules, how updates have changed, admin panel features, messages, and what will happen to custom content on your page’s tabs…

Keeping your tweets under control can sometimes feel like a workout. If you are managing a Twitter account for your business and a personal Twitter account, you have a lot to do. You have to keep track of what you tweet on both accounts, when you tweet, people who add you on Twitter, people who you want to add to a specific Twitter account, etc. For this reason, many people use Twitter dashboards such as TweetDeck or Hootsuite to help keep all of their accounts organized side by side…

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