My co-worker Luke forwarded a nice article.
Hey guys,
Here is a great article I came across that really has some great ideas for driving web traffic. Many of these are tried and true techniques but there are also a lot of other innovative ways included in this article as well….
http://seonoobs.com/104-ways-to-get-backlinks-mega-backlink-guide/
Some of the items on the list are questionable. But it does exemplify why it is hard to make your blog stand out in the mega-crowd of blogs on the Internet. Just posting blog posts won’t drive traffic; you have to do a lot of grassroots effort.
An interesting study appeared late this week in e-marketer about how varied touch points across multiple websites can lead to increased conversion rates. It also reminded me of a great post by Jeremy Reynolds that explains the importance of understanding this. Getting to know where your customers “hang out” online is important to consider when you decide to start investing in online advertising.
For online marketers who think that the last ad impression (or click) seen is the most likely to lead to a conversion, a look at the Atlas Institute’s “How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions” study may be in order.The study, conducted in the first quarter of 2007, found that US consumers were more likely to convert after viewing ads on multiple Web sites, suggesting that conversions should be attributed to a full set of impressions and/or clicks, rather than just the single one that preceded the conversion.
Two out of three consumers who eventually bought a product or took a responsive action were reached by ads across multiple portal sites before converting.
Nine in 10 consumers who converted were reached by placements other than the last ad seen. Also, 86.1% of ads which led to a responsive action were seen on multiple placements.
A previous Atlas study called “The Combined Impact of Search and Display Advertising” showed that sponsored search and display advertising together provided a 22% higher conversion rate over search alone.
Source: e-Marketer: Multiple Online Ad Placements Impress
Several weeks ago when I was getting ready to buy my new laptop, I started to research what it would cost me to buy a new laptop. What I quickly realized is that in addition to buying just the laptop itself, I am going to have to spend significantly for the software - Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and my favorite application Outlook; my development tools such as Visual Studio and SQL Server, anti-virus software etc. etc.
The MS Office suite costs about $500, not terribly expensive but definitely on the high side. Instead I decided it was time for me to try out OpenOffice - the open source word processing, spreadsheet and presentation authoring software. They even have a Access-like database and a couple of things beyond that. My experience has been very good so far. Not once have I had to go back and open a document or spreadsheet or PPT presentation in MS Office! I have gone out and done it just to make sure they look exactly the same - and they did every time. The user interface of the OpenOffice products is very similar to the Office XP suite of products. All the same options are available. They are pretty much in the same place an called pretty much the same thing too. Only thing I miss is the huge bank of templates that Microsoft makes available on it’s site.
I am sold on OpenOffice. I am going to give it 30 more days. If I don’t run in to any issues I am going to a) uninstall Office from my laptop, and b) make $$ contribution to OpenOffice.
MS Word –> OpenOffice Writer
MS Excel –> OpenOffice Calc
MS PowerPoint –> OpenOffice Impress`
