Yearly Archives: 2008
Featured Ian Lurie13 Aug, 2008
Content’s Long Tail, and Why It Matters
Sometimes, you just strike out. You spend a week researching that perfect link bait article, post it, get your friends to give you a Digg… And nothing happens. Nada. You can hear the crickets chirping as your boss or client winds up a kick that’ll land you out on the street. Don’t give up on… Read More
Elizabeth Marsten13 Aug, 2008
Top 11 Tips for Picking a 2nd or 3rd Tier PPC Engine
Most optimization tips and instructional guides cover the big 3 of PPC search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. But what about all those little guys out there? Have you tried any of those yet? I’ll review some 2nd and 3rd tier interfaces in the coming weeks, how the traffic was, how much it was, the… Read More
Tom Schmitz12 Aug, 2008
How to Build Reputation & Branding with Articles
Two fundamentals of building authority in search engine optimization are adding content and earning links. A terrific way to do both is to add link-worthy and vote-worthy articles. Votes come from social media web sites like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Digg. The more votes an article receives the more prominently it gets displayed on those… Read More
Ian Lurie12 Aug, 2008
Feedburner Showing Zero Subscribers
If you had, say, 1000 subscribers yesterday and 0 today, it’s probably not you. At least 3 other bloggers are reporting the same issue:
Ian Lurie11 Aug, 2008
MONSTER JAM: NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!
Monster trucks. Why? But about a Seattle’s worth of people go to these shows every year. A lot of people think monster trucks are really cool. I may not agree, but I doubt those folks would be all that excited at my taste in video games. So we’re even. As marketers, we have to get… Read More
Featured Ian Lurie7 Aug, 2008
33 Internet Marketing Terms You Should Know
SEO. PPC. Social Media. Pagerank. Link authority. What the hell? If you’re not an internet marketer, here’s a list of terms so that you can translate what someone like me spouts at you in a caffeine-induced rush. This isn’t a comprehensive internet marketing glossary. Just the terms we’d probably use without thinking about it. Print… Read More
Ian Lurie6 Aug, 2008
How the SEO Bubble Will Pop
I just realized we’re in an SEO bubble. There’s been an explosion of SEO consultants, companies, books, conferences, etc.. Everyone’s cashing in. Then, of course, I did some checking and noticed I’m about 6 months behind other bloggers who pointed this out in late 2007. So, I thought I’d fast forward a bit, and ponder… Read More
SEO Ian Lurie5 Aug, 2008
Choosing an SEO-ready Content Management System
Companies jump for joy at the promise of a CMS: They can update their site without hiring a web developer! They can publish quickly and easily! The internet is theirs for the taking! A few months later they’re stomping their feet with rage. What do you mean our new site is driving away search engines?… Read More
Ian Lurie4 Aug, 2008
Internet Marketing Zodiac: Building the Perfect Team
Yup, I’m back! Had a great vacation, and as always spent time wondering if my office would still be there when I returned. Of course it was. I have a great team. You can build a great internet marketing team, too. Not by saying “I need a developer” and “I need an SEO expert”. That’ll… Read More
Jarrod Medrano3 Aug, 2008
A Firefox Quirk You May Not Be Aware Of
When I was making some updates to the Portent Blog, I came across a strange problem. Whenever I highlighted the text with my cursor, I would get no visual feedback showing me what I had highlighted. I’ve actually run across this on a couple of other sites, which is why I thought I should share… Read More
Tom Schmitz1 Aug, 2008
Top SEOs Names Portent Interactive a Top 10 Firm
Every month, TopSEOs ranks internet marketing agencies in the United States. This month, Portent is the #8 agency for both Pay Per Click Marketing and SEO. I’m not much of a bragger, but this seemed worth passing along. You can see the rankings at: http://www.topseos.com/CompRank/index/. Full disclosure: Portent Interactive is a paying advertiser on TopSEOs.… Read More
PPC Elizabeth Marsten1 Aug, 2008
No Deep Secrets In PPC Marketing
If you’re like me, you have your Google Reader set up to feed you all the latest, greatest and newest news, tips and tricks in the world of pay-per-click marketing. At the very least you’re set up to receive recaps or topical news items. I noticed that when I receive recaps from Search Engine Land,… Read More
Tom Schmitz31 Jul, 2008
Everything You Wanted to Know About Inbound External Links
Today, a colleague asked me what I know about external links. Rather than simply e-mail her back I decided to sit down and answer this like I might if I were taking a college course exam. In other words a time limited brain dump. Let’s see how much I remember. :) A Little Foundation InLink… Read More
Portent Staff30 Jul, 2008
Copywriting is better than other writing careers
If you were a creative writing or English major, you may think your job prospects include pouring coffee in a cafe while scrawling poems on napkins, burying yourself in manuscripts as an editorial assistant in a publishing house, working as a journalist for a local publication, or of course writing the Great American Novel. But… Read More
Elizabeth Marsten28 Jul, 2008
Yahoo Outsources Your PPC Ads to India
Not everyone has the ability to work with Yahoo and receive the occasional free optimization help from their “experts.” If you do, carefully review the ads that come back. Several times, I sent in existing ad groups for help with ad optimization (who knows what will get a better quality index score than the search… Read More