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Keeping informed about the rapidly changing online marketing industry is what will keep your business up, running, and successful for years to come.

The articles to follow, touch up on some of the most important facets of online marketing such as PPC, SEO, and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). So read on, indulge, and soak yourself deep into the world of online marketing, your business will soon thank you.

1) The Reason Why Customers Aren’t Buying What You Are Selling 

Type: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

A great article to bookmark if you are in the mindset that an amazing website is going to do the work for you and automatically rake in sales. With Chris Taubers’ “key to selling online” you can let go of that mindset and start making your website profitable. Pay close attention to the key points mentioned:

• Website friendliness
• Is your product readily available to the consumer?
• Do you have Google Analytics installed for your website?
• Discover the User Flow Chart and infer your consumer behavior.
• The right landing page for the right audience to promote a better experience.

Also, if you are interested in optimizing solutions follow Frederick Vallaeys – @siliconvallaeys. He is a contributor at Search Engine Land & Optmyzr. Frederick goes in-depth with how automated features in Adwords revolutionize the way you optimize your campaigns.

2) These Analytics Reports Will Improve Your AdWords Results

Type: PPC

This article pinpoints 10 reports that will turn your strategy upside down and enlighten your perspective on your business’ consumer behavior. Don’t just settle for the data found in AdWords, look into the Google Analytics world and the myriad of reports it has to offer:

• Comparison Tool
• Landing Page Report
• Goals Imported To AdWords
• Goal Flow Report
• Keyword Position Report
• Intelligence Events

For more eye-opening articles I would highly recommend following Avinash Kaushik – @avinash the “Analytics Evangelist for Google” and subscribe to his blog Occam’s Razor.

3) The Top 10 Best PPC Hacks … Ever!

Type: PPC

Powerful content, especially if you are new to AdWords. Not only will you learn about important metrics and their impact on your campaign, but you can also pick up on best practices that will aid your campaign in acquiring the most leads & conversions.

Larry Kim @larrykim, Founder of WordStream, and  PPC expert focus on the following to hype up your optimizing:

• Quality Score
• Compelling Ads
• Bid Multipliers
• Mobile Opting
• Remarketing
• RLSA……and more.

4) How To Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint

Type: SEO

Thoughtfully put together to simplify your SEO efforts. Shepard proves a point, in that most of what we need to know about ranking a website is not all found in what we read.  For this reason, he creates a basic blueprint, outlining the process that would be easiest to follow when building a campaign, but also suggests incorporating other processes.

Among my favorite topics within the table of contents are:

Keyword Research: “Working Smarter, Not Harder”

Stressing on the importance of bulk ranking keywords rather than ranking on a single keyword at a time and mistakes to avoid with keyword research, certainly saves time and headaches.

Link Building: “The 90/10 Rule”

Stop wasting so much time on link building, according to Shepard, “90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building”.

More great articles and blogs on SEO can be found by following Rand Fishkin – @randfish, CEO/founder of Moz.

5) It’s Easy To Spy On Your Competitors Conveniently And For Free

Type: PPC

This article expands on the use of “Auction Insights” as a free alternative to finding out what your competitors are up to and how their metrics match up to your own efforts. You can do this within the AdWords interface, and look at other metrics such as:

• Impression Share
• Overlap Rate
• Position above Rate
• Top of Page Rate

This is a great feature in AdWords to use especially if you recently installed Google Analytics has yet to collect data. PPC Hero experts also have a lot to say on the subject, so check out their posts such as 3 Essential Tips for Spying on PPC Competition and Tools to Analyze Your PPC Competition

6) Google Analytics Data Import: 17 Ways To Revolutionize Your Reports

Type: PPC

Sometimes you just wish Google Analytics Reports could sculpt to your liking, well I must say that this article is a good way to get familiarized with a way to do so. As the article states: “You may have data about products, content, or users that aren’t part of any tracked session, which could bring new insight to your reporting and analysis of those sessions.”

To continue reading up on analytics and data import, check out How to Use the New Google Analytics Advanced Segments. Also consider following Neil Patel – @neilpatel, co-founder of KISSmetrics and CrazyEgg.

7) 8 Event Marketing Metrics You Need To Track

Type: All Marketing

Driving consumers to trust, show interest, or even consider your product or service, all come as opportunities laid out by event marketing. It allows for a dynamic interaction between your business and a potential client. For this reason, it is important to focus on the following metrics especially if you want a notion on how to better your event marketing and increase audience interaction with your business:

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

• Qualified Traffic Generated
• Conversion Rate
• ROI
• Abandonment rate (Bounce rate)
• Social Media Tracking

8) When Conversion Optimization Best Practices Fail

Type: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Read up. You’ll end up changing the cookie-cutter way of conversion optimizing your website. Yes indeed the traditional way is in the comfort zone of knowing definite results, but if you are a niche industry with specific targeted audiences or seasonality to consider, you might want to think twice.

Aviva’s examples give a great understanding of why most ‘best practices’ fail and how to focus “persuasion psychology” in order to get them working.

If you want to learn more about Conversion Rate Optimization follow Hiten Shah – @hnshah Cofounder of KISSMetrics and Crazy Egg.

What To Do Next?

Online marketing decisions should be based on educated strategies.

For this reason, it would be in your best interest to read these articles and keep yourself in the loop of the digital marketing world. Start off by subscribing to our blog. Hey, it’s free! Get constant tips and insights about PPC, SEO, and Online Marketing.