I am part of a modern generation of search engine marketers who look at usability, design, and ROI as measures of success in a holistic SEM strategy. Follow my bike ride to Florida >
Posts from January, 2009
8 Meaningless SEO pitches
January 27th, 2009 || No Comments »
As most SEO’s do, you probably stumble across a ton of website professing to do SEO with some interesting arguments to back up why they are the ones to go with. Some of what I find may sell well, but only to those client unfortunate enough to not consider some of what really goes into SEO. So, as my title promises, here are 8 really meaningless SEO pitches to watch out for:
1. “We rank #1 on Google out of 92 million search results.”
Who cares what you rank for, what do you clients rank for? And besides that, what difference does it make how many other results there are? Just because you have a lot of “competitors” for a keyword does not mean the keyword is highly competitive. I am pretty sure that even if there were only eleven results that came up for the word ‘Google’ it would be just as hard to be on page 1 for it.
2. “We are a Google AdWords Qualified Company.”
PPC, SEO: not the same thing. There is little that one learns while preparing to become AdWords Qualified that has to do with SEO.
3. “We submit your website to thousands of search engines.”
That’s great, now thousands of search engines that no one uses know about you; it does not mean that they care about your website. Read the rest »
3 Marketing Techniques
January 21st, 2009 || No Comments »
Having a great website is the first step in a successful online business, but it doesn’t do any good if no one can find it. While search engine optimization has been proven to be one of the most effective methods of driving traffic to a website, not everyone has the time or the resources. However, it is also possible to take elements of SEO that are less time consuming and yet highly effective. Here are three quick and easy techniques any business can benefit from…
Read the rest on the Blue Fountain Media blog:
3 Effective online marketing techniques every business should be doing
IHT.com calling IE 6 stupid?
January 15th, 2009 || No Comments »
I found this amusing comment while browsing through one of the International Herald Tribune’s css files. It appears on the page 6 other times. I also love putting in similar comments, although I have stopped doing this at all for my personal websites.
Write SE-Friendly Content
January 14th, 2009 || No Comments »
One of my former colleagues at Eurosport.com recently asked about how he could improve the search engine value of his articles. I wrote to him the following:
Writing for search engines is becoming increasingly like writing for humans. Search engines used to base rankings for a particular keyterm on the frequency of the term in question on a page. Today, many more factors are taken into account by Google’s algorithms, with the goal of determining the relevancy of the document to the user’s search query. As a general rule, it is more important to write natural sounding articles than to target them at robots. Here are some of the various factors to consider when writing for search engines…
Read the rest on the Blue Fountain Media blog:
Writing search engine-friendly content
Snuggies. LMAO.
January 8th, 2009 || No Comments »
They remind me of the Star Wars jedi robes worn backwards.

Obi Wan Kenobi in his awesome jedi robe (aka Snuggie).
WTF is affiliate marketing?
January 6th, 2009 || No Comments »
An intern of ours just asked what affliate marketing was, so I decided I would make a really simplified guide to summarize some of the basic points:
In a nutshell:
One website rewards other “affiliates” for visitors or customer acquired through marketing efforts done by the affiliates. Sometimes called “performance marketing” for the way in which affiliates are paid.
Origins:
The adult industry appears to be at the origin of affiliate marketing (along with many other innovations). They used cost-per-click to pay affiliates. Then came Amazon, who had affiliates place banner ads on their websites in exchange for commission on sales. As expected, today the most active sectors of affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, and retail industries. Read the rest »









