Featured

I’ve prattled on about the marketing stack for a few years now, but haven’t really explained each chunk. This 5-post series explains the stack as a whole, then piece-by-piece. I’m not some TV series jerk who will keep you hanging, though, wondering which of your favorite characters will die next (cough HBO cough cough). Instead,… Read More

100% pure ranty Monday goodness: 1: Some of us know what we’re doing It’s true! You can find internet marketers who know what they’re doing with a simple question: “Do you guarantee your work?” If they say yes, flee immediately. If they say no, follow with “Can you do link building for me?” If they… Read More

Design & Development

***** If you’ve ever used Photoshop on a Mac, you’re probably familiar with this guy. Would you like to send him packing and never see him again? If you answered yes, strap on your Photoshop helmet and get ready for the blog post of your life. For this blog post I am using Adobe Photoshop… Read More

SEO

Let me just start out with the ending. The Google Doc below takes a list of pages containing embedded YouTube or Vimeo videos and uses magic to grab all the data you need for a video XML sitemap. Then it makes the sitemap for you. You can have it by going to the link below… Read More

SEO

Ever had a massive, life-changing epiphany? Me neither. However, I’ve slowly reached the conclusion that we’re doing SEO all wrong. Not in the do-real-marketing sense, or the we-need-to-change-the-name sense. More in the wow-did-we-ever-screw-the-pooch-this-time sense. After 17+ years of beating my head against walls like IT departments, branding teams and disbelieving CFOs, I’ve figured out why:… Read More

  Keyword research used to be so easy. You picked terms that the client wanted to rank high for, stuffed them onto the page, shake, bake and voila, the site is ranking in the top 3 search results for query. Bad SEOs stuffed keywords in all of the wrong places, all over the page, and… Read More

Copywriting

Content strategists of the world unite! Have you heard? Content marketing is the future. I hear you saying to yourself, “But you’re an inbound marketer, Rebecca, isn’t that statement just a tad self-serving?” It’s not just me. Look at the spike in interest over the past two years: This is a conversation that’s being had… Read More

SEO

I just got off-stage after rambling about machine learning, link building and Penguin reinclusion requests. Nice long blog post coming right here, later, but for now, here are the slides: Machine learning and link spam – how hard can it be? from Ian Lurie And here’s a link to the link bundle: portent.co/machine-spam

When you look at over 250,000 links from Penguin-penalized sites, you learn a thing or two. We put together a report based on an analysis of a lot of links, and found that: While folks like to portray Google as fumbling their anti-spam efforts and missing many offenders, the big G may simply be prioritizing.… Read More

Duh. eBay commissioned a 26 page study through their research lab with one of their researchers and some reputable sources (a Univ. of Chicago Assistant Professor & UC Berkeley Associate Professor), citing some reputable resources (like Google Chief Economist Hal Varian), doing some pretty in depth research and even formulating their own algebraic equation to… Read More

Random

Back in November, we detailed the (Real) Life of Pi from pre-dawn breakfasts at the train station to lights out. In honor of International Pi Day, we decided to pull back the curtain again so you can see how each department contributes to the Internet marketing expertise here at Portent. Account Strategists @portent Account Strategists… Read More

SEO

I’m a huge fan of Garrent French’s link building tool, the Link Prospector, so I was jazzed when he released the Broken Link Finder. I wanted to give an overview of why broken link building is important and how this tool can save you a ton of time and effort. What is broken link building?… Read More

I hate doing things twice. I also hate doing things by hand. When it comes to PPC reporting, there is nothing quite as cumbersome as recreating reports from scratch month after month. Thankfully we have the tools available to us to make easy and effective automated reports a cinch. Assuming you have Excel, you’re pretty… Read More

PPC

We’ve discussed it, talked about it, webinar-ed, convened around the water cooler, blogged and tweeted. Opinions are hot, high, frequent and mixed. One thing is for sure, it’s not going away. Each time it seems as if the proverbial dust has settled, more about EC is announced. Each week a Google webinar reveals a few… Read More

Internet Marketing

We live in a culture of YES. Positive reinforcement abounds. Grade school kids get awards simply for participating. Everyone is special. Encouragement is great, don’t get me wrong. Accolades are a big part of what motivates us in life. In the business world, however, this can translate into dangerous decision making. Fear of killing creativity,… Read More

SEO

Before I even became an SEO I learned to hate SEOs. After all, SEOs would take the beautiful, functional site the designers and developers spent their nights creating and cram it full of footer links, anchor text, H tags, nofollows, and any other piece of code they could think of until the site couldn’t breathe.… Read More