Articles by Ian Lurie

Since I ranted about internet marketing training yesterday, I thought I’d post a video I just did for the team. This one’s a really quick look at Google Analytics, and how to do a fast analysis of lost organic search traffic: Quickly find and diagnose lost keyword-specific traffic in Google Analytics. I never build these [...]

How the hell do I teach my team internet marketing? Why do we all suck at it? I spend a lot of time on this puzzle. My company’s survival depends on it. I have to find ways to teach, and to teach teachers, while working it around everyone’s busy schedule. And I have to find [...]

There’s one concept in Atlas Shrugged that’s always stuck with me: Select, don’t accumulate. Ayn Rand was referring to stuff, of course: Everything from throw rugs to chairs to books. I love the idea in ‘real life.’ But it works awfully well in internet marketing, too. Accumulation marketing: We all do it Accumulation marketing is [...]

It’s Friday. I’m tired. Here are some quotes. All of which are true, but edited to protect the utterers: “We don’t need marketing. Our product is great.” I’d punch you, but I’m paralyzed by the stupid. “We need to test that, first.” No, you don’t. You don’t have to test whether having a ‘buy now’ [...]

In internet marketing, your top priorities are, in this order: Appeal. A desirable product. Quality. A product that doesn’t suck once people have it. Visibility. People have to find you when they need you. Stability. Your web site has to work. Ease of use. Make your site so easy to use, a brain-dead zombie could [...]

Lord knows I’m no fan of Newt Gingrich. His politics are so far to the right of mine he disappears over the horizon. However, he’s not the kind of guy to go hunting for fake self-esteem boosters. So when the nerdoverse exploded over ‘Followergate’ (term coined by PeekYou) and sprayed it’s way to CNN and [...]

In customer service, ‘being nice’ and ‘trying hard’ isn’t always enough. Sometimes, you have to be competent, too. Capable, even. Act 1: Undeath (of a monitor) At work, I have a 30” Apple Cinema HD. It is a fantastic monitor. Alas, 2 weeks ago when I plugged it into my laptop, it went all cattywampus, [...]

OK, first off, I have to make something clear: I am not an SEOMOZ fan. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with building fantastic tools, having a great conference, gathering all the SEO geniuses and best developers and generally smartest people in one place. I have no problem with a company so famous my [...]

This blog post is based on yesterday’s content strategies session at MozCon. If you missed it, or wanted a refresher, give this a read: A quick preview This post is huge. So, here’s a quick preview: The problem. In content creation, you can’t do the minimum required work any more. There is no ‘minimum’. Changes [...]

Announcing a new tool: The Gramanator During my MozCon content creation session today, I announced a new tool: The Gramanator. It is mighty. It is the Gramanator: Bow down before it. What it does The Gramanator will take any public Google Reader Shared Feed and: Clean it up, removing stop words. Assemble all of the [...]