SEM Rock Stars
by Pete Hall @ Capture the Conversation Blog
 Five years ago, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising were only beginning to take shape as legitimate lead generation and marketing strategies. At the time, SEO and PPC were cutting edge marketing strategies - many brands and companies had heard the buzz surrounding SEO and PPC, but were unable to pinpoint strategy or purpose behind it.
Today, SEO and PPC have evolved into common marketing strategies for brands to place their marketing budget. Companies understand the huge opportunities that exist within search marketing for return on investment. Social media, conversely, exists much like SEO and PPC did five years ago. Companies and brands are keen to explore the social media space, but are often unable to define social media marketing success or execute a defined strategy.
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by Patrick Altoft @ BlogStorm
Most people are in broad agreement that the brand update is about maximising satisfaction rates and making sure as many of your visitors find what they were looking for at your site rather than having to go to Google and search again.
However some people are looking at satisfaction rates and thinking about bounce rates but they are a totally different thing.
First of all lets look at how Google defines bounce rate:
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by Greg Meyers @ SemGeek
Ok, let's be honest, we all know the answer is going to be BOTH. However, we must ask ourselves, what's the secret sauce that makes it more successful. Is it the seasoned experience and "outside the box" creativity or is it by default? Over the years, PPC has matured so quickly that it’s almost difficult to remember what it was like to simply “bid your way to the top” with Goto.com (Yahoo) or to understand or even pronounce this new search engine called Google. Now, roughly 10 years later, this once little piece of the online marketing strategy is emerging as the predominate money proving ROI machine where companies are spending billions of dollars to make it easier for people to spend their hard earned money.
With the change in the perception that these software companies are implying that PPC is just a numbers game and a matter of bid management or Analytics is a little worrisome for this SemGeek because it asks the question “Is PPC becoming more of a Science that an Art?" For many PPC Gurus, the idea of automating search marketing would traditionally leave us all feeling a little uneasy as it appears to be jeopardizes the integrity of all of the years spent “re-defining” the industry as well as downplaying the creativity of how talented search marketers make their client’s successful online.
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IQ Workforce Blog
by Corry Prohens
 Yes, it is an unusual qualification to see in job descriptions, but we are in fact looking for Poker enthusiasts all over the world.
If you know anything about IQ Workforce, you will correctly assume that the poker enthusiasts need to have analytics and online marketing skills, as well…
We just started working with the top online gaming company in the world. It is one of the fastest-growing online businesses in Europe. Their top site is their US poker site, but their fastest growing sites are in the EU and Asia/Pac...
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The Latest Survey Results
Our latest survey concerns the recent news of Adobe's acquisition of Omniture. We wanted to get an idea of what the Web Analytics community thought about the acquisition. Here are the results so far:
Almost everyone was surprised by the acquisition. Only 1% kind of saw it coming and no one totally called it.
43% believe there will be no NEAR TERM (6-12 MONTH) impact on the pace and type of Omniture’s product development.
35% believe there will be a positive LONGER-TERM (12-36 MONTH) impact on the quality of customer service and professional services.
45% said impact on Omniture’s competitors (Webtrends, Coremetrics, Unica…) will be positive.
52% believe this a good thing for the Web Analytics community as a whole.
To participate in our latest survey - please visit https://app.icontact.com/icp/sub/survey/start?sid=3332&cid=127264. To see all our survey results - please visit our industry survey archives.
Recent Industry Buzz
The industry leaders in web analytics have been evaluated and listed by topseos.com.
DURHAM, N.C. and Ramat Gan, Israel – Contactology , a provider of email marketing and online survey technologies, announced today a first-of-its-kind technology partnership with ClickTale , a recognized pioneer and leader in web analytics and customer experience optimization.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced new business analytics offerings designed to help clients better manage and control their unstructured and structured data in a unified manner, while providing valuable insight into their content across the enterprise.
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