Branding v Optimization- Something Has to Give.
Hot on the heels of my last article, “The Basics of Search Engine Optimization“, many commenters and emailers have let me know their opinions and stories about branding conflicts with search marketing. In-house SEO’s feel the pain more than the rest as they struggle to keep the keywords in front of the searchers, only to have corporate directives control the page title, relegating the website to the 3rd or 4th page of search results. I am friends with many in-house SEO’s. From Fortune 500′s, multi-national companies, even local big businesses, the problems of these in-house search marketers are primarily the same: calling things what they are, and optimizing for those…
The Basics of Search Engine Optimization
This morning, I presented at the Direct Marketing Association’s ACCM conference (for catalog retailers.) I always enjoy these specialized conferences because we can talk specifically about selling products online and how SEO can increase business, simply from changes in how one approaches the website. This presentation was inspired from a question asked from a prior conference. The question asked what is the top 3 things that businesses do wrong? It took me a while to distill it to three things, but I think I can summarize that most problems come from these problems in large companies. Top Three Mistakes: 1. Branding comes before marketing tactics. Many times, a company’s branding…
SlideShare.Net – PowerPoint distribution made easy!
My Web Analytics Course is featured on the SlideShare homepage today! Hooray! Certainly not a newcomer to the social space scene, SlideShare has become one of my favorite social sharing sites in a very short time. Granted, seeing a slideshow without hearing the presentation is a little odd, but I always have requests for my slides after a presentation. There are a few reasons that I hesitate to share my PowerPoints, the first of which is the time that goes in to create one of these, the second the clip art that I purchase for use in the presentation, and thirdly, because sometimes I look at these things and wonder…
Social Traffic: Useless Gossip or Powerful Word of Mouth
From the earlier article that I wrote, Social Media Under the Microscope, a lot of conversation was spawned as a result of the data findings. Many questions seemed to have been answered, as many people responded by confirming the same data on their sites. However, there were some new questions created from the data. The most fascinating questions revolved around defining the difference between different social media technologies, such as blogs, forums, online news sites, and social networking and bookmarking sites. Using the same data, but looking at it in different ways provided some very amazing trends. So, with new & improved charts (complete with fresh new colors) and additional tools…
No Goals – No Analytics!
I was reviewing some old articles on analytics when I caught last summer’s DM News Report on Analytics (PDF). I was impressed at the amount of information contained about the business case for analytics, all coming from some very intelligent people. The great thing was the consistent thread of thought throughout the entire report: Analytics is growing – and it’s more than web stats – it is marketing intelligence. Unfortunately, the gold mine is sitting untouched, as many businesses are unaware of the untold riches sitting just a few inches away. However, this grabbed my attention more than anything else in the report: “Web analytics works best when measurement expectations are…
Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day
Written by Matt Bailey, President of SiteLogic. Matt presents the start-to-finish guide for marketing online, answering many questions that most businesses don't know to ask!
