As we all know, Facebook is the #1 social media platform worldwide, boasting 800+ million users.  Still, Facebook is constantly attempting to improve a product that is number one— attempting to widen the gap from their closest competitors.  They have recently unveiled an update at their F8 conference to assist their users in remaining informed on important topics, but have they gone too far? (more…)

We have all heard of Facebook, and Twitter has taken the world by storm. Our world is filled with many different people with varying backgrounds, but one common denominator is the desire to be knowledgeable about our peers.  In social media, Facebook and Twitter have capitalized on this market; however, there is another social media outlet on the rise— Foursquare. (more…)

Social media is one of the most popular digital marketing discussions today.  Companies and agencies alike are working tirelessly to determine its role in overall marketing strategies and how to quantify their value to the marketing program.  For example, many respected sources have recently stated that social media is ineffective in driving e-commerce.  While social media might not be your biggest revenue driver (or even a significant one), this channel can offer significant branding opportunities that will you’re drive revenue in the long-run.  During the first part of a two-part social media overview, we’ll discuss 3 major considerations anyone diving into social media must consider.  In the follow-up, we’ll discuss measurement and quantifying the impact of social media on your marketing program. (more…)

We recently analyzed a Fortune 50 company’s paid search program to discover it was completely wasting 70% of its $20 million budget. The root cause was that they were not able to easily determine the areas that yielded positive or negative ROI. This caused them to allocate their budget in the wrong areas. Regardless of your industry, having the necessary reporting and analytical tools is crucial to ensuring that your Internet marketing budget is properly allocated. (more…)

We here at Rise just wanted to wish the folks over at Google a Happy Birthday. It’s been quite a ride over the last 12 years. We wanted to pay homage to Google by taking a look at how it’s changed over the years (especially for Internet marketers). Before we get started, here’s a look at where it all began: (more…)

Google recently announced they are rolling out changes to their keyword match program. For those that might not recall the types of keyword matches, please see our earlier blog, “Keyword Relevancy and the Broad Match Type”. Those advertising in Google AdWords (most of us) now have a new tool to use to optimize paid search campaigns – broad match modifiers. Broad Match Modifiers provide an advertiser with more control over when ads can be seen and this type of control is definitely a good thing. (more…)

We have analyzed some of the top E-Commerce Platforms, and created this matrix to easily see which platforms can be optimized for Search. Their ability to integrate with Google Analytics and Omniture is addressed as well. Take a look before you choose one for your online storefront to ensure you are giving yourself the best opportunity for SEO.

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Google has been living off Caffeine since the middle of last month. On June 8 they launched their new system for indexing content on the Internet. The old system used to index every couple of weeks, but now it is almost indexing in real time. That’s why the name Caffeine was such an appropriate fit.  ”Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before,” Google said in a recent blog posting.

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When you type Chuck Norris into Google and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” the phrase “Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you” comes up in a new page that mimics a Google search result page.  (shown below) (more…)

As Internet marketers, our number one objective is to utilize online marketing to boost company revenue by means of increasing sales. If you are like most marketers, you are spending money across a variety of online channels to generate conversions. So, knowing it is our responsibility to generate revenue via these channels, it is also safe to assume that most advertisers know their cost-per-acquisition (CPA) threshold, or how much they are willing to spend in order to have a potential customer submit a form, purchase a product/service, or complete whatever action they have deemed necessary to achieve their objective. After all, knowing this number ensures we can effectively allocate and measure marketing dollars and therefore prove an initiative’s value to company leadership. (more…)