If you’re spending money on pay per click marketing, you must buy your brand name! Ignore those who say otherwise. Make damned sure you’re bidding on the name, misspellings, and the like. Even if you rank #1 for your own name. Do it anyway. Here’s why: It’s cheap. PPC engines’ quality scoring algorithms mean you’re… Read More

I just realized I’m a hobbit by profession. I re-read The Hobbit (for the 6th or 7th time). For those who haven’t read it, the hero is an intrepid hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. He travels with a band of dwarves to slay a dragon named Smaug. Bilbo keeps his compatriots honest. He risks life, limb… Read More

Analytics

Google Analytics, Omniture, WebSideStory and other major analytics packages use tagging. They’re all worth spit if you don’t take advantage of it. This week I’ve had three clients nearly pop blood vessels over improper tagging by their teams. I thought a practical tutorial might be in order. Why? Without tagging, the software can’t accurately track… Read More

Design & Development

Web typography is an art that I’ve never totally grasped – I have to be honest. But I have learned some basic rules worth remembering: 1: Line Spacing Always use at least 1 full line between lines of text, like this: On my blog, I use 1.5em. Reading online text is a pain – wider… Read More

I may be engaging in excessive honesty in this post. If you’re a client, or thinking of becoming one, you’re getting a look at the closest thing to dirty laundry that Portent has. Some folks might tell me this is a bad idea. I disagree – there’s a valuable lesson here. We got fired today.… Read More

Random

I wanted to say thanks. One year ago, Conversation Marketing received 3100 unique visits in February. This year, I’ve already got 8,200, and am on track to have 18,000 unique visits in February. Last year, I had 20 RSS subscribers (not tracked in Feedburner, so the graph below doesn’t include it). This year, I have… Read More

Internet marketing is not SEO. It’s not PPC. It’s not e-mail or web design, or social media. It’s the sum of many parts. Here’s how I see it all fitting together: You can also download a PDF version here. Some Explanation If this is gibberish, you may want to skim through my book, which you… Read More

Rented and purchased e-mail lists seem like a great idea. Lots of addresses, targeted to you, dirt-cheap. But they rarely work. Why? Their lists are messy. Chances are they got a lot of the names on their list through something called ‘e-mail append’, where they take existing direct mail lists and scour the web for… Read More

April 5th-6th, I’ll be offering a 2-day internet marketing weekend. Here are the details: Everyone leaves with an internet marketing plan for their site, reviewed by peers. It’ll be informal. It’ll be in Seattle. I promise to be as sarcastic in person as I am online. I will prepare a worksheet for each site before… Read More

In no particular order: No one’s lives depend on what we do. But people’s livelihoods do. So take your work seriously, and take pride in it. 75% of your audience uses a search engine to find you. Get used to it. All the banners and ‘viral’ marketing on earth won’t come close to results produced… Read More

Random

Do you find this blog useful? Like what I write? I’ve got a business proposal for you: Donate $3 to my blog, once. I’ll keep writing the same stuff I always do. Tips about internet marketing, strategic advice, site reviews and of course, the occasional rant. I’ll do it whether you donate or not. But,… Read More

There’s an internet marketing metric you’re not watching, but you should be. You’re tracking visitors. You’re tracking pageviews. Hopefully, you’re even tracking keywords and conversions. But are you tracking bounce rate? Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors leaving your site after viewing only the page on which they landed. If I visit your site,… Read More

K, I had a great day today, so I’m cheery. That means it’s time to tear an internet marketing scam into a pile of tiny bits and pieces. Today’s victim is SEO Confessions, a site that guarantees everything except the apparent author’s hairstyle: I have no problem with the format. It’s a landing page and… Read More

The R word is in the American air again: Recession. Hard to believe it hasn’t already hit, given the money pouring out of the USA, the lack of money coming in, and our, cough, leadership. OK, I just got political for a second. I’m sorry. Note that I’m not specifying any particular leaders, though. Republicans… Read More

I spent the day today looking at pitch pieces by a few internet marketing ‘experts’. Now I feel dirty. But, in the interest of promoting knowledge, here I am, passing along knowledge gained at the expense of my appetite. There were a few selling strategies that all of the pitches had in common. So, here… Read More