Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Feb 9, 2010

fleur120

What does your search engine say about you? Well, if it’s Bing, you’re probably an early adopter, but you also visit, shop and ultimately make purchases from Walmart more than other search-engine users. Google searchers, on the other hand, are partial to Target and Amazon, and Yahoo searchers have a strong preference for wireless service from AT&T and Sprint. – What Your Choice of Search Engine Says About You (Advertise Age)

The study that was conducted shows that different types of searches and purchase behaviors happen on different search engines, which can be important to marketers and businesses who want to advertise on those search engines.

Last Wednesday, I met with an executive from Demand Media, a company that generates content based on popular Web searches and other data. Since then, I’ve spent about 20 hours reading past articles, calling people for background, doing interviews, writing my column, and working on the copy with editors Sunday afternoon. At Demand’s current pay rate, I’d be making almost a buck an hour. – Plentiful Content, So Cheap (NYTimes)

Demand contracts freelancers to write articles based on trends or keywords that are popular, paying about $15-$20 per article (or $30 per video). And then selling those articles to various online websites. These aren’t news stories or stories with any real journalistic quality, but they do show how cheaply some people are willing to work for writing an article. In this environment, it’s tough for other sites to compete for revenue – unless they offer something unique or more thoughtful.

The title tag is one of the most important things to get right if you want to do well in Google. It’s not the only thing but if you neglect your title tags you’re making it very hard on yourself. – 8 tips for the perfect title tag (The Web Usability Blog)

Closely related to our post – 7 Tips for More Shareable Titles – Title tags are usually what social media sites pick up when you share a title. They’re also important for Google and search engines – they show up in the page results and are used for ranking. And they show up when people bookmark your page in their browser. Take a look at these tips for how they should be formed – most web software will allow you to tweak your title tags they way you want and if you’re not sure, ask your webmaster.

The link between retail and publishing has always been strong. A product promoted in print sells products that are available online or in store.

Thanks to online, the link is getting stronger, and now the lines are becoming blurred, as retailers become publishers and publishers begin to move into retail.

– The blurring of online fashion retail and publishing (eConsultancy)

Online retailers are becoming publishers in order to provide a reason for consumers to come back to their sites. Publishers are selling things online for another stream of revenue. I imagine we’ll continue to see this line blur.

We post links to stories about how to use the web for business throughout the day on Twitter, Google Reader Shared or Delicious. Also, if you have a post or link you think is worth sharing, please let us know!

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Technorati tags: internet strategy, web strategy, online strategy, internet, web strategy

Reader Interactions