Don’t Let I.T. Run Your Website Project
I got a note from a prospect the other day saying, roughly, “We don’t think we need a site architect. Our IT department is going to work with our designer.” Yikes. That short exchange raises so many concerns. I’ll start with the last one first.
Read MoreDoes PPC Spend Affect Natural Search Results?
An associate in Northern Arizona pinged me about an odd effect she was seeing in one of her client’s online marketing campaigns. They turned off their PPC campaign for a while and saw a quick and dramatic drop – 50-60% – in traffic from NATURAL search. Not from PPC, which obviously plummeted to zero, but…
Read MoreTweaking for Dollars
I just finished reading Steve Krug’s latest book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, and was particularly struck by his suggestion that you tweak your website rather than redesigning it. In fact, one of his usability testing maxims is “When fixing problems, always do the least you can do.” “Do the least you can do” isn’t a…
Read MoreGet Top Search Rankings with Sneedobb
I had a lively discussion with a writer and online marketing guy from a local ad agency over beers last night. (Side note: Wednesday is wings night at Sun Up Brewery, the hot wings are tasty and just the right amount of painful, and the Trooper IPA cools the fire with delicious efficiency.) Our conversation…
Read MoreUsing KEI for Keyword Research in Wordtracker
If you’re using Wordtracker to do keyword research for search engine optimization, you may find this useful. Wordtracker is a great tool for keyword research, but it does have one puzzling quirk: Wordtracker gives us two indexes – KEI and KEI3 – and they don’t agree. KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, and it’s a…
Read MoreGetting a Handle on Post-Conference Overload
October 20, 2010 NOTE: I wrote this post after last year’s BOLO, but it’s still plenty relevant as I sit down to go through pages of notes and a thick pile of business cards. Links and tags updated. I just got back to my office after the excellent BOLO2010 conference here in Phoenix. (My sympathy…
Read MoreGoing to BOLO? Grab My Conference Planner
I’m attending the BOLO Conference in Scottsdale next week, put on by my friends at Agencyside. If you’re going, and especially if you’re from out of town, download my BOLO Conference Planner. There are so many great workshops, labs, and breakouts at BOLO that I think you’ll find it useful in picking your sessions from…
Read MoreSocial Media DOES Help Your Search Ranking (Just Not Your SEO)
I love presenting at conferences and seminars because while I’m teaching, I always end up learning something, too. I was reminded of this at a presentation I gave recently for small business owners at the Small Business Development Center in downtown Phoenix. The title of my workshop was “Tune Up Your Site for Search Engines,”…
Read MoreFour Ideas for Marketing Travel in a Tough Economy
With the typically busy travel weekend of July 4th looming, I thought I’d take a look around the Webs and take the temperature of the industry. There’s good news and bad news, and I have a few ideas to share on how to tune your marketing during a down economy. AAA projects a decrease of…
Read MoreCreate Your Portable Personal Marketing Campaign
(This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in Process, June 2009) You’re not going to have that job forever. I’m sorry, but you’re not. Business is undergoing fundamental and sweeping change, and one of the consequences is that there are no more “lifers” – not in middle management, not on the factory floor,…
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