As gas prices climb, so does online spending. Online retailers may have high gas prices to thank for the increase in the number of US shoppers making purchases online. We’re all affected by skyrocketing gas prices, which, according to a recent eMarketer article, are resulting in fewer trips to the brick and mortar store and more web surfing for American consumers. 11% of consumers from a recent Nielsen survey said that they are now shopping online (up from 9% in June 2007), and more than half of the respondents from a related study said that high gas prices were an incentive for that choice. Click here to read the full article.

A recent study published by eMarketer shows that Internet users worldwide are becoming more likely to unsubscribe from email lists that they opted into (and even report them as SPAM) based on the content of the email. Among North American respondents of an April 2008 survey, one third said that an email’s content was a deciding factor for making an email legitimate.

Other key factors included requesting to receive an email (72%), as well as the email address and name of the sender (48%). While maintaining a focus on SPAM compliance is important to email marketers, the study suggests that actual email content should also be visited to maintain high email response rates. Click here to read the full article.

Writing online content, for a new website, email blast or other online medium can be challenging. When approached with a new online writing assignment, I focus on the following ideas:

Audience
Appeal to the audience at hand. Identify the target audience of the piece (whether it is a family planning a summer vacation or a businessperson looking for a new bank) and use words and tones with which that audience is familiar.   

Goal
Keep the goal of the piece in mind. For instance, if the goal is to have visitors purchase online, use short, punchy calls to action to entice a sale. On the other hand, if the goal is for visitors to stop by a physical location, use rich, descriptive copy that leaves them wanting more.

Length
Deliver the message succinctly. It’s easy to paint a picture with words if you have unlimited space, but when writing online, space is usually quite precious. Use bullets to make dense copy easier to digest. Bold and italicize important points. Edit (and re-edit) drafts to remove unnecessary words.

Graphical Elements
Visualize the finished product. The graphics and overall design of the piece will first catch the eye of the viewer. Focus on writing copy that highlights and supports these graphics. Incorporate headlines that convey your message, while creating a relationship between the copy and the graphics.  

Today we're finishing our series on keys to a higher Google ranking with the following three tips: 

Send Press Releases
If you think about it, releasing a press release online is genius. It is exactly what you want to say, on someone else’s site, linking back to you! The secret to press releases working for you is to do them frequently and make sure they include your target keywords. Send them out over Internet PR wires, which are cheaper than PR newswire for less important releases. If your management sees PR as primarily offline (print), retrain them! People under thirty aren’t reading your print article.

Share with Blogs
The popularity of blogging has given rise to a whole new form of PR. Go find people who are blogging about relevant topics, and include them on your releases. Because bloggers tend to be informal, sometimes just giving them a “sneak peek” a day or two ahead of your consumer email is spot on. Again, frequency, relevancy and relationship building are key.

Make a Video
There is a new-ish video camera called The Flip (www.theflip.com) that some are calling the iPod for video. It’s simple to use, and I think it will help continue the revolution of video on the web. More and more, Google will integrate video into its results. So you’ll want to rank high on videos too. Just make sure they are properly tagged with keywords, for optimal ranking. Consider putting up a tagged “trailer” on YouTube, which links to the video on your site.

Continuing with yesterday's topic, here are two more simple ways that you can increase your natural Google ranking. 

Develop Natural Content
Google rankings are also based in part on the amount of relevant content found on a website. Keyword rich, relevant and unique content will help your website gradually gain higher rankings on Google. Some ways to build natural content include forums, blogs, customer testimonials, case studies, news and articles (about your company or industry).

Evaluate Your Title Tags
The biggest “on page” factor to getting a good Google ranking is with your title tag. Put your keyword first in the title, not your company name. If your company name is in your URL, you’ll most likely rank first for that anyway. So make your title say “KEYWORD, brought to you by COMPANY,” which gives you a 20-30% keyword density that is optimal for titles. And vary them up between pages.

Click here to read the final part of this post.