Google has dropped the reverse phone number lookup feature.

A new report from agency GroupM and comScore details the degree to which search and social media have become intertwined in the purchase path that consumers take across the Internet. The report is a follow-up to a similar study done in 2009. GroupM and comScore looked at consumer behavior…

Obviously, you want your online business to succeed instead of flop. Like most business efforts, you have to learn what to do – very few people succeed by jumping in with both feet. What usually happens is they jump in, find out the water is over their heads and they’ve forgotten how to swim.

One of the most important initial steps in any search engine optimization endeavor is keyword research.  Without the right keyword research, you can pretty much count out any success in an SEO project.  Keyword research can mean the difference between sub standard and exceptional performance of a marketing campaign.  So, I would like to go through the steps that I utilize and factors that I consider while performing comprehensive keyword research for a website. 1.  First, brainstorm and determine the keywords that you will target based on industry information. It sounds more simple than it really is.  If you’re targeting travel, which keywords do you want to focus on?  What competition level are you prepared to go after?  How many conversions can you reasonably handle?  How much link building can you reasonably handle?  Well, one might surmise that the travel industry, for example can include travel related keywords.  To target a group such keywords and find out search data behind them, you could try brainstorming a list like so: Travel Airplanes Bus Train Car Travel by airplane Travel by Bus Travel by Train Travel by Airplane Travel by Plane Resort Hotel 2.  From here, we can plug these keywords into the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator to determine Global Monthly Search Volume, among other stats, to help us determine the best keywords to target for our purposes: Keyword: travel Global Monthy Searches: 37,200,000 Keyword:  airplanes GMS:  2,740,000 Keyword: bus GMS:  30,400,000 Keyword: train GMS: 30,400,000 Keyword: travel by airplane GMS: 12,100 Keyword: travel by bus GMS: 135,000 Keyword:  travel by train GMS: 165,000 Now that we know our Global Monthly Search Volume, we can look at other factors to choose the best keywords to target.  The keywords travel, airplane, and bus are all way too general.  Are we looking for information on how to travel, or airplane tickets?  Are we looking for information on buses and airplanes, or the best priced tickets for these methods of travel

It appears someone has launched a successful PR campaign poking holes in Google’s search quality. Why do I think someone has launched a PR campaign? As Auric Goldfinger tells James Bond in the movide Goldfinger (1964), “They have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance

As a long time and trusted marketing agency, TopRank Online Marketing gets to work with some amazing B2B technology and SaaS companies. One of those companies is StrongMail .  Today Kristin Hersant, VP of Corporate Communications joins an esteemed group of marketers and thought leaders ranging from Guy Kawasaki to David Meerman Scott interviewed here at Online Marketing Blog .

Famous Tang Dynasty romantic poet Li Bai, born on Feb.

Posted by MikeCP Choosing an eCommerce platform can be a terribly frustrating experience because of the options and packages available, the misinformation, the pushy sales reps, the time and money investment, and so on. I want to talk about this decision because of this experience, but I don’t plan on making any platform recommendations

The Academy Awards, more frequently dubbed the Oscars, are more than an event – they’re a nationwide phenomenon. It’s little surprise, then, that as technology advances, so does the number of ways viewers can take in the entire thing. From the red carpet to interviews to the award show itself, the Web has become an invaluable resource for any true Oscars fans

The new navigation bar, which we reported on earlier this month, is more about managing your identity and privacy online than integrating social or tracking you, according to Google . Google has been “thinking about” and identifying different ways people identify themselves online. Click to read the rest of this post…