March 2009 Archives
Jeepers Shaggy, it’s about time! You know when MSN AdCenter has a tool that you don’t you’re getting lapped. Even if it’s not the most robust or granular tool, it’s still rather helpful to be able to choose at what time during the day your ads show or being able to incrementally adjust your bids based on the audience. This may be less applicable to some industries (think groceries, real estate and cars) but very applicable for others (perhaps weddings, jewelry and fantasy football). So today I was pleased to see that finally after all the emails, announcements and
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I hate when good people suffer from bad SEO: Us Seattleites love the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tomorrow will be the last print edition. Here, in the Emerald City, we already knew the venerable newspaper was to become an online only publication. And as much as we hate to say goodbye to the broadsheets, we want the online edition to succeed. That’s why this story hurts. I hope they fix it quickly. Today The Seattle PI made the URL switch from seattlepi.nwsource.com/ to seattlepi.com. Unfortunately they made a critical mistake. Instead of redirecting from the old domain to the new domain by
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Continue reading Seattle SEO Dysfunction at the PI
A proud day at Portent: Elizabeth Marsten (our lead PPC guru) and myself worked with three other authors to publish Web Marketing for Dummies All-in-One. I won’t belabor it, but I’m allowing myself a brief bit of pride. I wrote about 400 pages of this 800+ page book. I’m particularly proud, though, that one of my team is also an author. I feel pretty lucky to get to work with such a talented group of people. Marty Dickinson wrote Book 1: Web Presence. I wrote Book 2: Search Engine Optimization And Book 3: Web Analytics Elizabeth wrote Book 4: Online
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Continue reading Portent Team Co-Publishes a New Dummies Book
These are my notes from Danny Sullivan’s keynote address to SEMpdx’s 2009 SearchFest on March 10, 2009. Danny Sullivan’s All Request Keynote at SEMpdx SearchFest 2009 Definitions SEO = Organic PPC = Paid SEM = Everything, both paid and organic What type of SEM are you? Link builder? Social Media? There are a lot of sub-types. What type of SEO are you? SEO may need rebranding. Then Danny shows the Dorvak snake oil quote. Then the Seth Godin, Mary Hodder, Jeremy Shoemaker, AmEx Open Forum…all negative quotes about SEO. Does SEO need a name change? Part of Danny does not
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Continue reading Notes from Danny Sullivan Keynote at SEMpdx SearchFest 2009
We’re all very well familiar with Google’s myriad of keyword generation tools, be it within the AdWords interface, the external keyword tool, by URL, by similar keywords, by topic or the new “search based keyword tool.” Then of course each search engine has it’s own keyword tool generator, add in the Wordtracker, Wordstream and Trellian’s of the world and you’ve got a lot of resources. But where do you go to find those really weird and whacky keywords that you should be bidding on? Or at the very least, expanding your negative keyword list with? Ask.com is Useful? eVisibility’s post
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Continue reading Keyword Resource Tools that Aren't Keyword Tools
To me, internet marketing is comprised of 3 kinds of optimization. I’ve built Portent around these three areas - if you’re considering working with us, this is another way to look at our approach. The three types are: Site Optimization This is the least-known, at least by this name. We practice site optimization when we analyze how visitors use your site, and then make changes that will increase sales, or leads, or some other conversion rate. Site optimization includes: Analysis: Reviewing what’s attracting visitors and what’s driving them away. Creative work: Writing copy and designing pages that will welcome those
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Continue reading The Three Kinds of Optimization
