We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yesterday was the darkest day of the year here in Sweden. So from now on we’re going towards brighter days, and wherever you are we hope you come along. 

Right now we’re very busy looking at new innovations that will enable our users to communicate even more efficiently and through additional digital channels.

In 2010 we’re going to continue our mission to help our users to create valuable content, to easily publish and maintain the content. And most and foremost do it in as simple and cost efficient ways as possible.

That’s our promise.

All the best for 2010.

Tags: yooba, 2010, cost efficient marketing

Nowadays, Google amongst some others offers tools to improve your site performance.  Now you can also test where you're most likely to get conversions and engagement. Check it our here.

From Mashable.

Tags: google, conversion, engagement, web design, yooba.com

First of all let me just say that I believe that it's required in most cases to use SEO.

Having said that, I have a number of different topics I would like to discuss with the SEO community.

First of all, why are there so many people still preaching that you should never ever use Flash because it isn't indexed by Google? In July 2008 Google announced that they indexed Flash and in June 2009 Google's Flash indexing got even better. Why then can you still read in countless blogs or comments in forums that you shouldn't use Flash for indexing reasons? If you still doubt that Google can index Flash content read this, which answers many of the questions you might have on how Google's Flash indexing works.

One thing I often come across when talking to SEO experts is the opinion that you shouldn't even bother creating a site or a single page without SEO in mind. I refuse to believe that every site and every page would benefit by maximizing the number of visitors. There are many cases when it is more important that your existing visitors or customers get the right content at the right time, and not as important that you get loads of new visitors.

There is little debate over the importance of incoming links to your site for high ranking. It is also rarely disputed that an incoming link from New York Times is worth more than a link from a fake blog created by an SEO expert. The Google ranking value of a link from the Times is in fact so much higher than a fake-blog link that one could argue that it would be much more efficient to spend all your time and money to get organic links on trusted sites. This is achieved by traditional PR, not by SEO.

When everybody has purchased services from SEO experts, who will be ranked highest?
The most SEO friendly site is black text on white background and no graphic elements, but how do you build a brand in a black and white world? An old truth is still a truth, content is still king. If you have an interesting site with great content, people will want to visit your site. To get people to link to your site, you must have interesting content.

Tags: seo, flash, internet marketing

Now is the time for various reports and predictions for 2010 and onwards. Recently the European Interactive Advertising Association published their bi-annual report on the current trends, and future trends in on-line advertisng.

Some key findings:

• "The evolution of consumer habits appears also to be influencing allocation of advertising
  spend"
• Up to a quarter of all Europeans now use TV and Internet simultaneously
• Due to customers' multi-channel media usage, marketing budgets are encompassing both digital and traditional elements.
• "Mobile is a rising star."

The trends:

• "83% of all marketers surveyed stated that online advertising spend during 2009 has been greater than in 2008"
• 94% expects growths in 2010 and 93% in 2011

• "A 7.6% year on year rise in online advertising spend in 2010"
• An increase of over 15% forecasted for 2011

Source: EIAA (The report)

Reflections:
Changing media consumtion also relates to 'the connected consumers' appearing in this previous post on how 'Digital brand experiences can create customers'.  I.e. how customers gets increased broadband accessibility, spends more $ online, regurarly visits community sites, 'creates' some sort of digital media (video, photo, music or news) and how all this relates to positive and digital brand experiences.

Tags: eiaa, online advertising, media consumption, branding