Using the Bing search engine just got a bit more interesting. Thanks to a new feature rollout, next time you search for a term, you’ll see a list of your Facebook friends who have liked each of the links.

This was the latest step in the partnership between Bing and Facebook that began last fall. In October, Bing first introduced “likes” in some people searches and queries. According to a Bing representative, the partnership aims to help users make better decisions by being more aware of their friends’ social activity. Facebook’s “like” button is featured on more than 2.5 million websites – and with this new partnership, it will likely begin to have a meaningful impact on results and rankings.

But, this isn’t the only search engine that’s beginning to use “social buzz” as part of their algorithm. Google recently launched an update that included integrating data from Quora, Flickr, and Twitter. It also has a pending deal that will include certain Facebook updates in its social search offering.

This poses the question – Just how powerful is this “push button” sharing? It’s very possible this could take the place of link building in the future as a dominant ranking factor.

Why? Because while search engines use links as “votes” and a way to gauge a website’s popularity, the social sharing elements such as “likes,” “tweets,” and other sharing buttons are much easier for individuals. Link building requires a knowledge of HTML, something that many normal users don’t have. Not to mention, social sharing is much more difficult to “out-smart” than some link-building techniques.

To learn more about the partnership between Bing and Facebook, check out Mashable’s article titled, “Bing Now Shows Your Friends’ Facebook Likes for All Search Results.”

Does proper sentence structure really matter when writing a PPC ad? According to last week’s rollout by Google Adwords, it just might. A recent article on the Think SEM blog outlines these changes and what they mean for marketers.

According to the article, ads in the “top 3” section that use proper sentence structure will get a longer headline. And, if they use a sentence for each line of their ads, the second line will jump up and join the first, separated by a hyphen. Finally, the third line will occupy the second line’s original place. Given the new guidelines, showing in the top three places can give you an even bigger boost over your competition.

However, the more the author looked into Google’s new guidelines, the more he questioned what they define as a “sentence.” According to their guidelines, “we’re changing the placement of the first description line for certain ads that appear above the search results on Google. For some ads where each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation, description line 1 will be moved to the headline and separated by a hyphen.”

This poses the question – is Google looking for a sentence or a sentence fragment?

With 31 million blogs in the United States, and a predicted 34 million by the end of the year, it seems that everyone is starting a blog. But strangely, most people don’t maintain it after the first few months. A recent article by Cats Eye Writer, explains why.

According to the article, many people experience what the author calls the “Princess Syndrome.” Bloggers want their work to be perfect – appealing, beautiful, and error-free. When writers get too consumed with the need to be perfect, they realize there isn’t enough time in the day to work, spend time with family, and spend time writing great blog posts.

So what do you do if you’re suffering from “Princess Syndrome?”

• Write from the heart – Writing from the heart is one of the best ways to show your true personality. Even when you think something is quirky or weird, write it anyway. It will help you connect emotionally with your readers.
• Ignore your 8th grade grammar teacher – Blogging should be casual and conversational, so it sounds similar the way you talk. Don’t be afraid to start a sentence with “and.”
• Give it a day – If you have the time, let the post sit for 24 hours and go back to it later. You may catch a few things you want to change when you’re looking at it with a fresh set of eyes.
• Read once for clarity – Reading your blog post out loud can help you determine if there are any awkward transitions or clunky spots that could be re-worded.

For more information and tips about overcoming the Princess Syndrome, check out, Why Most People Quit Blogging: The Princess Syndrome.

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A recent SEOMoz article presented an interesting problem that’s being seen more frequently in businesses. The business highlighted in the article found that, when typing their brand into Google Search, the Suggest Feature displayed “client brand name + scam.” As a top result, it definitely has the potential to damage the company’s reputation – and deter customers that are ready to pull out their credit card and buy.

This is being seen in more and more businesses, even if they’re not fraudulent. Even if 99% of customers are happy, there are still a few that are dissatisfied with the business and want to make it known to the public. Unfortunately, those few customers contribute to the “scam” result.

After doing some research, the SEOMoz team hypothesized that only a few customers typed in “client brand name + scam,” but it was enough to become a suggestion. Afterward, it’s likely anyone searching for the term was interested in the result and clicked on it. The more people that clicked on it, the higher it moved in the list of suggested terms.

If this has happened in your business, the good news is – there’s a way to fix it. The team at SEOMoz has compiled a list of the best ways to approach the problem, which can be found in their article called, Our Online Reputation Management Playbook.

Turn your sales page into a giant YES button with the help of a few conversion rate tips. A recent article by Unbounce compiled a list of 2010’s best conversion rate optimization blog posts that you can use to take your sales page from ordinary to “Wow!”

Here are just a few of the highlights:

Conversion Optimization Case Studies

Best A/B Case Studies of 2010 - This blog post is filled with an array of great case studies that will give you ideas you can implement into your own business. The article studied several small- and medium-sized businesses to learn about their A/B testing and learn what worked and what didn’t.

How I Set Up and Sold a Product Using Unbounce, Wufoo, and Chargify – This blog post talks about some of the great tools available that can help you optimize your website – and encourage your customers to buy like crazy.

Landing Page Examples

7 New Landing Pages for Your Inspiration – This blog post gives some great examples of excellent landing pages, designed to inspire the reader. The author gives commentary on each example; discusses why he likes it and lists a few ideas for improvement.

Webtrends Lead-Gen: A Lesson in Cool Simplicity – The article uses a landing page example to do a walk-through of the elements and what’s great about it. It’s a great way to get inspired before creating or revamping your site.

To learn more, check out ”52 Ways to be a Conversion Badass.” The article is filled with tons more resources that can help you improve your businesses’ conversion rate.

As more and more users turn to Google Local, Yelp, and related sites, the yellow pages industry continues to suffer. 406strategies recently explored what’s really happening in the industry.

To start off, the lack of usage is occurring primarily in the younger demographic. Nearly 100% of this age group completely ignores the yellow pages, while the older demographic still occasionally uses them.

At the same time, the industry is experiencing a lower sales volume because of search localization. This opens up many doors for the SEO industry, as budgets are transitioning from yellow pages to online marketing.

Two recent filings of public companies were especially helpful in getting an inside look at what’s happening in the industry:

Super Pages – Known as one of the largest yellow page companies, Super Pages experienced a 61.3% decrease in revenue from 2009 to 2010. Additionally, their net profit/loss went from breakeven in 2009 to a loss of $16.83 million in 2010.

Dex One – Producer of dex and dex plus yellow pages, the company experienced a 63% drop in revenue from 2009 to 2010. Additionally, their net loss increased from $435 million in 2009 to $903 million in 2010; they defaulted on $6.9 billion in loans, and they have $6.3 billion in debt.

For more details about the decline of the yellow pages, take a look at 406strategies’ article titled, ”State of the Yellow Pages Industry.”

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As the importance of online marketing campaigns grow, users find themselves with endless tools at their disposal. A recent article from Yoast outlined the some of the best tools available today. Here are just a few of their highlights:

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is constantly adding new features that can help you enhance your SEO and SEM campaigns. The service helps you track the number of visitors, clicks, Adwords spend, and more on your businesses’ website. You can also use it to track the effectiveness of certain elements that change over time including email blasts and advertisements.

Clicktale – Clicktale takes website tracking up a notch by providing you with an actual video of customers surfing on your site. You can see your site’s “hot spots” and “cold spots” by seeing exactly where your customers click. It also shows you when readers don’t particularly like certain content and hit the “back button.”

Google Website Optimizer – For split-testing, check out Google Website Optimizer. The tool lets you test multiple versions of a page to see which version gets more clicks and closes more sales. You can test several pages of your website at once and generate a report that shows the results of the testing.

These three tools will give you a great start in enhancing your online marketing campaign. For even more ideas, check out Yoast’s article called, “Tools to Improve Your Online Marketing Campaign”

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It’s a common misconception among marketing and advertising professionals that writing PPC advertisements is easy – after all, there are boundaries under which to work, like a strict text length. A recent post on Deep Foot Prints, however, claims it may not be that straight forward. Here are a few tips to help you create successful PPC advertisements for your business:

Understand the business you’re writing for – If you’re not writing for your own business, spend time getting to know the business you’re writing for. Talk with key decision makers, learn about their products and services, speak with a customer services manager, research the target demographic and main competitor, and more.

Maintain a clear theme – Ensure your ad groups are closely aligned to one another. To do this, try for no more than 20 to 30 keywords per ad group, and aim your ads to only certain pages on the website.

Write a Strong Ad Headline – The headline if your hook and the biggest attention grabber. Fail here and there’s no turning it around. With only 25 characters, you have to make each character count. It’s usually a good idea to use a keyword here and use questions to entice the reader into looking at your ad.

Write Strong Descriptions – this part of the ad allows you to include more detail than the headline. You’ll want to tie this into the headline. So, if you asked a question in your headline, you’ll want to use the description to either answer the question or insert a call-to-action.

Create an attractive display URL – This is often overlooked when creating an ad, and that’s simply a wasted opportunity. The display URL needs to contain the same domain as the domain in the ad/keyword destination URL, so the shorter your domain, the higher your freedom. Try using the core keyword or the name of your current promotion.

These tips and more can be found in the Deep Foot Print’s article titled, How to Write the Best PPC Adverts.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any great tips for writing killer PPC ads? If so, please join the conversation and comment below.

As social media continues to influence the digital marketing industry, the question arises – Is email marketing dead? A recent article in Oracle Digital explores recent studies that encourage business owners to drop (or decrease) their email marketing efforts in exchange for a social media strategy. Here’s why:

Email open rate has dropped – The July 2010 edition of the Email Marketing Benchmark Report by MarketingSherpa showed that average email open rates in the U.S. dropped from 14% in the last half of 2007 to 11.2% in the last half of 2009. The article contributed this to a number of reasons including the increased use of email on smart phones, image blocking, and list fatigue – but most importantly, social media.

Marketing vs. entertainment – As a rule, most email marketing campaigns contain a marketing or sales-driven message. Facebook, on the other hand, is viewed more as “entertainment” because of users’ ability to interact with others. According to the report, two of the four most under-performing sectors were Entertainment at 9.2% and Marketing at a 7.4% open rate.

Facebook grows at significant rate – Facebook currently has more than 500 million members and are growing at more than 700,000 new users per day. Recently released figures showed that the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is those aged 35-55. What’s that mean for business? This specific age group is comprised of money-earning consumers and business owners that are ready (and able) to buy your product.

Despite all of these statistics, we don’t believe we’ve seen the last of email marketing. It may get less attention in the future, but it can be combined with a social medial campaign for an overall successful marketing strategy.

For more information about the decline of email marketing, read Oracle Digital’s article called, Email Marketing is Dead: The Statistics and Social Proof.

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Does having a simple video on your website really make that much of a difference? According to Carl Juneau, it does. A recent article from Visual Website Optimizer highlights the results when Juneau added a video on his website to help demonstrate his products. The result? Three split tests proved that videos increased his conversion rate by as much as 46 percent. Here are a few of the tests he ran using Visual Website Optimizer:

#1 A/B Test (Call-to-action)

The first split test used two variations of a call-to-action on his sales page:

• Control: “Next Page Read Sample of Book”
• Variation 1: “Watch Video Preview”
• Variation 2: “Watch my #1 Abs Exercise on Video”

Goal: Click on call-to-action and go to next step
Result: The call-to-actions that mentioned a video significantly increased the number of visitors to reach the sales page. The best performing variation was #1, with an increased conversion rate of 14.18%.

#2 A/B Test (Sales letter)

The second split test used one variation of the sales page:

• Control: Long-form sales letter that has been tweaked over the last two years.
• Variation 1: A one-minute video by Carl that demonstrated his best abdominal exercise. It finished with a call-to-action that directed viewers to the manual and workouts.

Goal: Get user to go to next step of the funnel
Result: The video sales page increased the number of visitors who clicked to the pricing page by 46.15%.

To read about the remainder of the split-test results, check out the Visual Website Optimizer’s article called, Video converts and here is the proof: 46% increase in conversion rate.