Online advertising is an art form that not many, especially regular internet users, appreciate. In a world where consumers have more power than ever before, and where they use that power to demand greater relevance, efficiency and enhanced performance without having to do any work, online advertisers have to rely on all the advantages that technology has to offer. Even casual observers have to admit that the job is a difficult one. Companies such as Phorm and BT Webwise in the UK and NebuAd and DoubleClick (in partnership with Google) in the US have received an enormous amount of flack from the public for their information tracking and behavioural advertising technologies. As with so many issues that cause public outrage, the online advertising furore is far less serious and far simpler than it has been made out to be.

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Numerous online companies use the services of consultant SEO agencies or freelancers to do an audit on their developing website, with the intention of implementing the advice to improve their site and speed up the launch date. Usually, the consulting company passes on their recommendations to the site`s manager, but because of doubt or hesitation on the part of some stakeholders, the audit often doesn`t get put to good use. The result is a waste of time and resources by both parties. It would make a lot more sense to first ensure that all stakeholders are sold on the importance of web site optimisation, rather than allowing neglect to interrupt the implementation of SEO practices.

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Recently, E-Consultancy posted a few articles regarding the state of play of some of the UKs biggest retail brands and their online performance. Upon closer scrutiny it appears as though many of these retailers are making the same mistakes, and although these brands are paying a lot of money for PPC campaigns, they are completely ignoring organic traffic. PPC is not the be all and end all of online marketing, and if you can`t find the Boots website in the top organic listings for the search phrase “Boots”, then you know there is a problem.

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I`ve been working on the redesign of our side site for a few weeks now, and one key question needed to be addressed. What type of menu structure works best? Typically, SEO companies will advise site owners to use a CSS drop down menu structure, as it brings the 3rd tier content closer to the home page and thus gives it more relevancy and link juice. But is this the best route for usability and conversion?

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Bounce rate: a measurement in Google Analytic’s that indicates the number of your visitors who jump away from your website after they arrive at a page, without going to another page. Definitely one of the most useful metrics webmasters or marketers have in their arsenal. One can merely glance at the bounce rate of a page or an average over a section of pages, to derive some idea of how the page is performing.

The post that is linked to as a reference by the official Google Analytics blog as an adequate explanation is called Bounce rate: sexiest web metric ever? I hope that`s it`s referenced because it is an accurate interpretation of bounce rate, rather than because it`s what Google want us to hear.

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Is your PPC campaign suffering from low click-through rates and high minimum bids? It might be time to start looking at your account structure. This would, of course, be after scrupulously sifting through your keyword list. We are assuming here that your keywords have been meticulously and accurately selected.

Many experts advise advertisers to keep their PPC account structure in line with their sitemaps, or website structures. This is a great idea if it is possible. It maintains an order that is easily lost when creating targeted AdGroups, but in many cases, it`s just not viable.

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Viral marketing has proven to be very successful for many online companies, so long as they get it right. That`s the trick though: to get it right. There are many reasons why viral marketing can sometimes hit the mark, and will at other times slither into underground territory where no one takes any notice of it. Finding the right playing field can be tricky, but once you`ve correctly targeted and researched your market, your viral campaign should be set to go. Only the right target market will catch on to the intent of the campaign, so double check that you are distributing/introducing it into the appropriate social community.

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It`s been making headlines in search engine news for some time now, but many people, SEO`s included, still aren`t aware of how big the mobile revolution really is. And it is huge. Smartphone sales are rising and even regular cell phones are starting to incorporate a limited range of smartphone-like capabilities to support internet functions. It`s time that search engine optimisers pulled their noggins out from the sand and addressed the mobile phenomenon head-on.

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It`s been a good decade since Google launched itself on an unsuspecting search market and its continuing contributions to the online industry have (mostly) proved to be revolutionary. But with all the advancements that they`ve made, they`re still no match for the human brain and how it thinks and searches for answers. When we look and search for things we tend to look for things that are related, in other words, we look for things that are familiar to us, or that can be associated to things that we know. My dad is a doctor and he refers to this process as associative search because we search along networks for associations between things. He thinks that`s just how they came up with search engines and looking at it closely I guess he is right.

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Social Media has positioned itself as one of the most unrestricted forms of online communication to emerge over the last couple of years. It allows members of different communities who have similar interests to participate in conversations with experts and fellow industry affiliates to discuss a variety of topics, which span thousands of issues among the various communities.

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