Google, however, has over 200 ranking signals that it has also publicly stated. Kasteler believes this number is probably closer to 1,000 signals. As a result, he doesn’t think that people should make such a big deal about site speed.

“The fact that it will affect you is highly unlikely,” he said.

Kasteler goes on to explain to WebProNews that Google still places relevance above all other factors. In other words, if you do have a fast site, it doesn’t always mean that you will rank above your competitors.

“You can have the fastest site in all the world, faster than all your competitors, but you still need to be relevant,” he added.

To summarize his thoughts, speed will not impact your site’s ranking if you do not have relevant content. Speed is an important factor but only after the relevance criteria is met. For example, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft all conducted studies on pages that loaded quickly against pages that didn’t load quickly. They found a 7-12 percent increase in conversions on the pages that loaded faster. Mozilla, specifically, found a 15.4 percent increase on pages that were only one second faster.

Kasteler believes that because speed impacts conversions and usability, it is more important than SEO.

“Having a fast site is way more important than SEO,” he said.

So, by having relevant content and fast site, everyone wins.

First of all, he points out that visual clutter is a problem. Flash and animations draw people’s attention but not to the point of conversion. Ash calls the graphic designers behind these creations “frustrated art school drop-outs.” Animations also present a problem since they often take a long time to load.

Another “deadly sin” that marketers make is giving their visitors too many choices. When there are links to a business’s partners, affiliates, and more, it does nothing but confuse the visitor. Instead of overwhelming people with these choices, Ash suggests putting just 2-4 options on a landing page.

Thirdly, one size doesn’t fit all with landing pages. Unfortunately, some businesses market through different channels but send all the traffic to the same landing page. This methodology doesn’t work because people are coming from different traffic sources and need landing pages that match their original intent or keywords.

“The best practice is really to have as many landing pages as you need with specific themes or background thought processes that the visitor might have,” Ash said.

A fourth “deadly sin” is when marketers put too much text on the landing page. In this age of technology, people have an even smaller attention span than they had before. For this reason, marketers need to keep it short, simple, and to the point. If they do need to add more information, they should put it in other links.

The last problem that Ash discusses is the sin of asking for too much information. As he explains, marketers often get greedy and try to get names, email addresses, and more for future use. However, he believes that marketers should only ask for the information that is necessary to complete the current transaction. According to him, users are more likely to spread word-of-mouth and influence by their own free will. He also said that if they are pleased with what they received, the chances are greater for them to visit again and even possibly give more information willingly.

For more on landing pages and how they can lead to conversions, check out Tim Ash’s Conversion Conference.

In this interview with WebProNews, Dan Zarrella of Hubspot discusses a few of the issues that people are having with social and what they can do about them. For starters, people are always raising questions about measuring social media efforts.

“When you’re talking about social media analytics and measuring social media, it’s really important to be accurate, [and it's] not so important to be precise,” said Zarrella.

For example, most of the tools for getting positive or negative feedback about a brand are 50-60 percent accurate. If you are using one of these tools for specifically fleshing out the bad tweets about your brand, you’re only going to get a little more than half of them. Zarrella calls this form of measuring precision.

With accuracy, on the other hand, he points out that you can look at trends. For instance, if you look at the baseline of positive tweets and the baseline of negative tweets, you can measure increases and decreases.

Also regarding data, Zarrella emphasizes the importance of digging into the data and finding out what it means. There is a group in the social media industry, which he calls the “unicorns and rainbows,” that tend to constantly push engagement, value, quality, and other buzzwords.

While these areas are important, he said that the tactics around them are only based on what feels good. This group doesn’t encourage people to call themselves gurus or experts. However, Zarrella has found that, according to the data, people that do identify themselves as an authority on Twitter have more followers. For this reason, he believes people should get into the data and act on what it implies.

In addition, Zarrella discusses Facebook and how people don’t have to be concerned with the continuous changes as long as they are geting the basics right.

For starters, he discussed the battle among the search engines. Although Yahoo and Microsoft have partnered in a joint search effort, Yahoo claims it is applying a different algorithm to Bing’s index, which would mean different search results for Yahoo users. Even if this is the case, Clay believes that users will continually shift toward Bing.

Ask is no longer a player in the search space, but Blekko is in. However, Clay does not believe that it will emerge as a strong competitor for Google or Bing.

Moving on to Google, the search veteran predicted that Google would become a local search engine in 2 years. Local is definitely on the rise, especially since more money can be made in it. For example, local regions can bid on national terms such as shoes. By doing this, they have the potential to increase their ROI. If this happens, they are more likely to spend more money on their PPC campaigns, which means more money for Google in the long run.

“You either play in the local space… or you’re not going to get clicks even if you’re #1,” Clay points out.

He also talks about Google News and how he believes that it will be as big as local is now. He even predicted that Google News would be a viable competitor to major news outlets such as CNN and Fox News.

“I don’t believe we’re going to get into a situation where Google’s going to pass on an opportunity to control the flow of news,” he said.

Getting into social media, Clay made the statement that likes are the new links. Because social is becoming such a big part of search, he believes that likes, referrals, and recommendations will be factored into the ranking algorithm that search engines use. If this happens, you can expect to see new forms of spam.

Only time will tell if these predictions will come about, but the one thing that is certain is that it’s going to be a very interesting time in the search industry.

Link bait is, essentially, the idea of creating some form of content on a website with the hope that other people will link to it. This content could be breaking news, video, images, offers, promotions, and much more. As Hartzer tells WPN, social media is a great way to popularize this content so that others will link to it.

When the content is an offer or promotion, he advises people to utilize sites such as Slickdeals and FatWallet to drive more people back to their site. This drives traffic, which generates links, which also leads to better organic rankings.

“Even though you’re giving something away, or giving a certain percentage off a product, you’re actually going to gain,” he said.

On Bruce Clay’s idea of “likes are the new links,” Hartzer said that if ‘liked’ content becomes popular, it would become trackable, which could then become a traditional link.

He also talks about a new tool from Standing Dog called Review Analyst. This tool allows businesses to monitor reviews, media, and statistics across the Web to help them better manage their reputation. Learn more about this product by visiting its website.

In this interview, he talks to WebProNews about how Google is getting more and more information on a regional level, such as social feedback. As a result, he believes that in 3-5 years, Google News will be as big as local is now.

He even went one step further and predicted that Google News would be a viable contender against major news outlets like CNN and Fox News.

“I don’t believe we’re going to get into a situation where Google’s going to pass on an opportunity to control the flow of news,” he said.

The search and advertising giant already has tremendous influence on the Web, but it would have even more if it controlled news content. If Google did, in fact, take over the news space, Clay said, “it could be a very interesting time,” especially with Google involved with a TV service as well.

He feels so strongly that this prediction will actually happen that he is already developing products based on the possibilities. Do you see Google taking over news?

To learn more about Bruce Clay’s predictions, watch the full interview.

As he explains to WebProNews, when companies base their global strategy on their Web analytics, they are making a big mistake. In these cases, companies look at their analytics and think that they should target the countries that they are getting the most traffic from. Another common mistake with Web analytics is when companies assume that the amount of traffic from a country matches the amount of conversions.

After doing international SEO for 8 years, Bonfils believes that neither of these approaches are very effective.

“There are a lot more components to identifying the markets that you want to go in other than just Web analytics,” he said.

These components include keyword research data, identifying local competitors in the market, technical issues, and ecommerce-related items. Bonfils suggests plugging these factors into a spreadsheet to determine which market is really the best option for your company.

He also points out that simply translating keywords and other search data do not produce accurate results. Every country has its own vernacular, which is often misinterpreted in translation.

Although an international search strategy has many challenges, there are also many global opportunities for businesses. Bonfils recalls that approximately 75 percent of all of Google’s traffic is from outside of North America, which means international programs are expanding rapidly.

Because of the large growth in global search, SEM International is teaming up with the SMX conference series to have one day based solely on international search. For more information on this, check out upcoming SMX shows.

One principle is to persuade and not push. For Facebook, subtlety is more effective than aggressiveness.

“On Facebook, you don’t want to sell really hard,” said Zarrella.

She went on to say that marketers should lead consumers most of the way but let them take the final step.

Another principle that can be learned from Buffy is to be predictable. Just like the predictable character arc in every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Zarrella said that businesses should also have branded content patterns on Facebook.

When businesses apply this model, consumers know what to expect. She suggests dedicating a certain day for contests, such as every Wednesday. While the details may change, consumers will know that every Wednesday there will be some type of contest in which they can participate.

Thirdly, Zarrella said that it is important to know when something is working and when it is not. The Buffy series lasted for 7 successful seasons but knew to get out while it was still on top.

Furthermore, businesses need to be ready to make changes when their strategy is not working. According to her, Facebook gives businesses the ability to have fun and implement strategies that could not be carried out on their website.

Interestingly, these tips and more can be found in The Facebook Marketing Book written by both Dan and Alison Zarrella.

For this shift, Raven has built a tool called Link Manager that helps users manage these relationships. It has a multi-user interface that tracks who was contacted, the status of the relationship, how many links are being built, and if the links are staying.

Another helpful tool from Raven is its CustomRank tool. This tool allows users to customize their own points of value on a site. For example, one company might place a lot of value on a site’s Alexa ranking, while another company might place their value on a more technical factor. Users can choose which factors they want to monitor and then let the reporting engine do its job.

Henshaw pointed out that this tool puts the power into their customer’s hands, which allows them to better communicate with their clients.

“It’s not about us telling somebody how to do their job; it’s about us giving them the tools to be more efficient and do it the way they think is right,” he said.

He went on to say that Raven was working on several other useful tools that would be released in 2011. To learn more about their tools and the plans they provide, visit their site.

In this interview with WebProNews, Tan Tran explained how FreshDrop offers domain names that are already indexed with the search engines and have PageRank, backlinks, and many other important factors.

FreshDrop has compiled all the popular domain auction sites under its one centralized platform. It allows users to search for domains by keyword, vertical, or analytics. The analytics portion is interesting since users can search backlinks, traffic, and whether or not the domain is listed in directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo, or Google.

Tran said their solution saves money and time. FreshDrop also continuously works to maintain the most current and accurate data.

To learn more about these domains, visit their site.

The technical side of neuromarketing involves brain scans and the actually measuring of what goes on inside a consumer’s head. It then analyzes the data in a way that identifies how the consumer responds to advertising and marketing messages.

The other side of neuromarketing is the more practical side for small businesses and involves behavioral science. This part looks at why consumers do what they do.

Because of neuromarketing, Dooley said that focus groups are essentially a thing of the past. He goes on to say that they tend to bring about misleading results since they are not able to get into the subconscious behavior of consumers.

“The vast majority of our mental processes and our decision-making are not part of our conscious awareness,” he said.

Since neuromarketing analyzes behaviors of the brain, many consumers have expressed concerns about it. They often equate it to “mind-reading” and are afraid that marketers will create “super ads” from that information.

However, Dooley believes that these concerns are “misplaced” and “overblown.” He said that even with better market research, it is very unlikely that any “super ad” could ever be created.

Although, at this point, large consumer companies are primarily the only companies that can conduct neuromarketing experiments, there are still opportunities for small businesses. On Dooley’s blog, he offers practical information from neuromarketing studies that any marketer could apply to his campaign.

To learn more about this new form of marketing, check out his blog.

“It lets you take advantage of another 10-20-30 percent click volume that you wouldn’t have,” he said.

Interestingly, paid search is a lot more than just advertising. It also involves landing page optimization. For example, Geddes pointed out that if a page has several thousand clicks but no conversions, there is a problem with the landing page. He goes on to say that one of the most important elements of landing pages that is often missed, is when people neglect to put their call to action above-the-fold.

“80 percent of the time, 76 percent of clicks occur in that above-the-fold section,” he said.

Geddes also discussed some recent changes to bg Theory and the impact they had on the site. The site has 3 major goals for getting conversions. Its blog, although it received a significant amount of traffic, had really bad conversion rates. As a result, Geddes moved the conversions to the blog. When this happened, the site’s overall conversion rate decreased considerably, but its revenue increased greatly.

From these changes, Geddes found that they were bringing more customers into the funnel. He said, “Traffic gets someone to your site; the page then has to pick up the traffic in order to convert it.”

The tool provides a quick and efficient way to learn about what is going on with a website. As Kronis explains, it allows users to type their url and as many competitors’ urls that they want, in order to compare data. Results include backlink information, Page Rank details, and even clickable items such as robots.txt files.

These results can then be exported as a PDF. Although the tool is similar to other SEO tools, Kronis said it is very “non-intrusive.”

The tool is free and always will be, according to Kronis. He also said that it would be available with the newest version of Chrome. To test SEOAudit, visit their site.

On the topic of social media, Kronis brought up an interesting point about how the original focus of it has gone away.

“People need to stop thinking about all the techniques and start being real again,” he said.

He goes on to say that social media involves both giving and taking and shouldn’t be merely about pushing promotions.

Without passion, a blog cannot become established as an authority or sustain readers. Forrester believes a lack of passion is the “biggest killer for most blogs out there.” He goes on to say that if a blog does not have passion, it will run out of steam before it can reach success.

Passion results in value, which leads to loyal readers. When businesses and people enforce these practices, the readers will go on to share this valuable information socially and produce links, which will establish the blog as a resource.

“This is a business like any other, and it requires time and investment,” said Forrester.

Incidentally, these are challenges that everyone faces including Microsoft and MSN. Due to their size, however, they also have scale to deal with. Forrester pointed out that social media helps, since it aggregates users’ sentiment and provides a means to communicate with them.

Microsoft recently put this into practice with Xbox when it addressed customer service issues through Twitter. It actually broke a Guinness World record for being the most responsive brand on Twitter. Apart from the record, this move additionally resulted in more links and a stronger brand.

In this interview, Forrester also offered up tips for conversion optimization that are addressed in his book, Turn Clicks into Customers.

“If you’re running an e-commerce-style business, it is critical that you optimize for conversions,” he said.

He further mentioned BeanCast, which is a marketing podcast that addresses some very specific issues such as the Twitter Tax and advertising in Captchas.

Social media is simply a new way for businesses to get their message out. Akers said that the old tools and tactics are still very necessary but that social helps to amplify the message further.

In addition to enhancing a business’s message, Twitter has also provided an “association” for those involved in social media, PR, as well as numerous other careers. Many industries have associations that meet once or twice a year, but Twitter has given individuals the opportunity to meet on a daily basis.

“We are an association that doesn’t just meet once a year at a conference, but we’re daily connecting with each other and learning from each other,” said Akers.

Since there are many businesses still struggling to embrace Twitter, PR Newswire offers a service called SocialPost that helps them distribute their press releases on the microblogging site. The news is promoted over 4 relevant channels throughout a 24-hour period.

Are you using Twitter to enhance your message?