The Goal of Internet Marketing

By on July 12, 2011   /   Branding, Businesses, Resources, Social Media Marketing, Web Design   /   10 Comments

Internet marketing and SEO are supposed to help make a lot of things happen for a site- boost your ranking in the SERP, increase your brand presence online, drive more targeted traffic to your site, build and maintain an online reputation, establish relationships with consumers and so forth. Some website owners decide to focus on one of these goals as the final measurement of success, but in the end it’s all about conversions. Each of those aforementioned points is a path that leads to an increase in a site’s conversion rate; they are a means to an end, not the end in themselves.

I’ve met (and still meet) plenty of website owners who still think that PageRank is the end-all-be-all measure of success, and that just isn’t the case. A site’s PageRank is only one of the thousands of factors Google takes into consideration when determining a site’s position in the SERP. Chances are by the time you are done writing up the report on how well your targeted keywords are ranking, the results are invalid.

Site owners should really be focusing on their conversion rate as a way to tell if their SEO is working. A higher conversion rate means more targeted visitors are being delivered to your site, which in turn means that you targeted the appropriate keywords. A higher conversion rate also means that your site is properly optimized. Visitors are able to find what they are looking for quickly, and the call-to-actions are doing their job.

I’ve had clients call me in panic, anxious because their site analytics showed that visitors were only staying on the site’s landing page for less than 30 seconds. They were certain this spelled doom for their site. But here is the catch- their sites were designed to encourage visitors to CALL the company. Once a visitor has the phone number and has made the effort to place a call, why do they need to hang out on your website?

It’s very easy to get focused on one or two factors (like bounce rate or number of pages visited) and lose the forest for the trees. That is why website owners need to look at their analytics as a whole (and with a grain of salt) to really understand and successfully interpret the data.

While a site’s conversion rate isn’t the only thing that matters, a higher conversion rate usually means more sales and more profits, which is the final goal of any business. A strong conversion rate is usually a good indication that all your SEO pieces are working together.

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

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Facebook IPO Targets 100 Billion!

By on June 18, 2011   /   Branding, Businesses, Digital Marketing, Emineo Media, Facebook, News, Resources, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design   /   1 Comment

Numbers soared to surprising heights when LinkedIn went public, so naturally rumor has it Facebook (news, site) is is preparing itself for an IPO that could surpass US $100 billion.

The report comes to us via CNBC, which says the IPO is likely to happen during the first quarter of 2012. This date makes sense, as it falls in line with the company’s deadline for reporting its financial information, regardless of whether it’s private or public at the time.

Some perspective: should Facebook’s IPO meet expectations, it would be one of the largest in history, quadrupling Google’s US $23 billion IPO in 2004.

Whether or not this is as good of a thing as it sounds like for Goldman Sachs, the network’s main investor, remains to be seen. While certainly still a giant, Facebook’s growth has reportedly begun to slow.

According to the latest report from Inside Facebook, the network’s membership growth was 11.8 million in May and 13.9 million in April. And while that might not seem like a deal breaking difference, it does serve to highlight a couple of particularly unsettling numbers: Facebook lost roughly 6 million US users in May and another 1.5 million users in Canada during the same time period.

Still, Facebook’s international popularity is becoming increasingly significant, as the network gained 1 million users from locations such as Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines.

What do you think of the reported IPO numbers, and what aspects of the impending mania give cause for concern? Let us know in the comments below.

Facebook IPO Targets 100 Billion Despite Slowing Growth.

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Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46%!

By on June 17, 2011   /   Branding, Businesses, Digital Marketing, Emineo Media, News, Resources, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design   /   1 Comment

The mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace. According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically. (Currently, 37% of all mobile subscribers in the United States have smartphones.)

Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46% | Nielsen Wire.

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