5 For Friday – Links, Stories, & Posts For Your Weekend

December 28th, 2012 by Search Influence Alumni

Five Ways complexWe’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Is Google Scared of Amazon? — SEOBook

SEOBook, latching on to a Bing-sponsored study that indicted Google’s switch from Shopping Search to AdWords-based Product Listing Ads, posits that Google is afraid of Amazon’s conversion data. SEOBook claims that, like the search behemoth’s failed acquisition and then direct competition of Groupon, Google exerts its organic search power to give credence to its product search, which due to brand recognition and skillful acquisitions has become a strong pull away from Amazon’s purely organic search strategy.

The Magic of Visual Merchandising — SASRlink

SASR, a retail merchandising company, takes the high-impact product display of Adidas and compares it to the look and feel of physical stores. Supermarkets are among the best at (admittedly real-life) conversion optimization. Read this excerpt:

In-store displays should always be clean and neat and never over-crowded, as that can create confusion and detract from the main goal of selling. Items in a display should interact with and complement each other.

Is that not the same advice touted by CRO experts for landing pages? What other sources of inspiration can you draw good website promotion from?

Sina Weibo has a Cool Way to Make Money — Tech in Asia

Right now, “Chinese Twitter” Weibo has no revenue model. But their test from last week of essentially “Tweet to Buy” seems to give Twitter and other social networks hope for directly creating e-commerce sales. Using integrated “Weibo Credits,” the social network generated nearly $416 million in revenue for the smartphone company Xiaomi, flying in the face of IBM’s data that social can’t drive real sales. Should stateside networks take notice?

How to Read Google Forum Posts — Search Engine Journal

Echo chambers abound when you follow any social network, online or off. A swath of SEO news sites took hold of one post Matt Cutts made in the Webmaster forums about press releases — but was that post really so newsworthy? Alan Bleiweiss takes SEOs to task for not seeing the bigger picture: that there are other reasons to build content than simply the direct SEO benefit. Furthermore, Bleiweiss asserts that spam is spam, no matter what the site, and that PR sites tend to be filled with news that doesn’t really deserve press. Read his rant and find out how to turn quick, tangential, one-line responses into actionable steps to better your site’s SEO.

Top Ten Google Analytics Reports — Koozai

When Analytics is used to strengthen your online tracking, it’s a godsend. But what data is actually important? Anna Lewis whips up 10 of the most telling Analytics reports, from Top Content to finding (not provided) keywords via a Landing Page report. Cutting through the fluff in reporting lets you really “get stuff done.” Want to make your own Top 10 list? Follow Avinash Kaushik’s “So What” test.

Got a killer link from this week? Let us know in the comments!

And now… your moment of zen.