Yearly Archives: 2008

caught-thief Featured

Ian Lurie30 Oct, 2008

Stop Plagiarism in 3 Easy Steps

I recommend the death penalty for plagiarism. Until that happy day arrives, I’ll share a technique that at least makes life harder for thieving scumbags. Step One: Trap Your Post First, you need to add a trap to your blog post. Usually that means an invisible GIF image. Use your image editing software to create… Read More

hiring Random

Ian Lurie29 Oct, 2008

My Company’s Hiring

Portent Interactive is now hiring: Portent’s Seeking SEO Interns Don’t know who the smartass was that wrote that post…

Random

Ian Lurie29 Oct, 2008

Portent’s Seeking SEO Interns

Portent is now hiring slave labor interns. If you are: Smart; A capable communicator and a good writer (meaning you can write a sentence that doesn’t make our copywriting team cringe); Want to learn the wild and wacky world of Search Engine Optimization; Looking to do real, honest-to-goodness work that generates real, honest-to-goodness value; have… Read More

Copywriting

Ian Lurie28 Oct, 2008

A Copywriter’s Practical Guide To Smart Internal Linking

Yo, copywriters. If you freak out about semantic markup, then you have varying degrees of apoplexy over links. But linking is a critical part of smart online copy. Links are why it’s called the world wide web, and not the world wide collection of random disconnected bits and pieces. So you need to learn. Here’s… Read More

PPC

Elizabeth Marsten27 Oct, 2008

Winning In the Wedding Industry with PPC

We’re all familiar with the wedding industry’s spending power, no matter what the economic climate, the lavish wedding will always prevail. The industry is highly competitive with high barriers to entry, so how do you generate a positive ROI in a sector that can bleed your budget dry within an hour? Build Up & Be… Read More

Copywriting

Ian Lurie24 Oct, 2008

A Copywriter’s Guide to Semantic Markup

Copywriters are a weird, weird bunch. They fearlessly crank out pages of great prose – an activity that terrifies most people – but are horrified when I mention something like ‘semantic markup’. The concept of a heading tag reduces the best writers to a mass of quivering jelly. Well, for all you writers out there,… Read More

Copywriting

Portent Staff24 Oct, 2008

How to Use Dating Bible’s “The Rules” to Succeed in Internet Marketing

Become an internet marketing creature unlike any other Times are tense, and now more than ever, you feel the burden of needing that ever-elusive advantage over the competition. If you’ve overdosed on tipping points, purple cows, and cheese-moving, it’s time to turn to the true treasure-trove of internet marketing secrets: the dating bible “The Rules”… Read More

Stone Face Internet Marketing

Ian Lurie23 Oct, 2008

Of Mythology and Marketing

There’s a difference between mythology and marketing. Mythology is what makes people say “I don’t know why, but I just need a web site”. Or “We should add some social media stuff to our site”. Marketing is what makes people say “We have a national audience. A web site will help us reach them”. Or… Read More

paulson-headline Featured

Ian Lurie20 Oct, 2008

How To: Write an Internet-Ready News Headline

When you write a headline for an online news story, follow three rules: Length isn’t (as much of) a constraint. In print, you have to make your headline fit a certain number of column inches. Online, you can add a word or two. Or three. Or even four. Don’t keep a headline short and uninformative.… Read More

su-banned-thumb-500x389 Random

Ian Lurie20 Oct, 2008

StumbleUpon Banned Me

[Update: After about 2 weeks, StumbleUpon lifted their ban on me and several of my staff. My guess is that our single office IP address flagged something in their spam algorithm, and after human review they let us back in. If you get banned, and you haven’t been spamming, send them a note explaining what… Read More

Featured

Ian Lurie17 Oct, 2008

10 Ways Internet Marketing Is Like a Ruptured Disc

Just about a year ago, I ruptured two discs in my back and herniated another. Or at least the doctor found them a year ago. Who knows how long I was carrying them around like little ticking tissue time bombs. Gimping yourself that thoroughly makes you think. In fact, you can’t do much except think.… Read More

PPC

Michael Wiegand16 Oct, 2008

The AdWords Quality Score Hammer Has Fallen, Now What?

Google AdWords is a mystical beast sometimes, capable of dumbfounding and goring the best of us. My cost-per-click cohort, Elizabeth, kindly tipped us off to Google’s most recent Quality Score update – and it appears the latest changes are starting to affect the paid search landscape in a big way. For some, scores have dropped… Read More

Random

Ian Lurie15 Oct, 2008

Internet Marketing Webinar: Canceled

Was it my deodorant? Response to my internet marketing webinar was, well, kind of embarrassing, so I canceled it. I’m going to slink off to my cave and nurse my wounded ego:

cattle-email-bad2 Internet Marketing

Ian Lurie14 Oct, 2008

Become a Spammer: Learn Better E-mail Marketing Habits

When I say ‘become a spammer’ I mean it in the FBI/Mulder profiling way, not the Buy-lots-of-servers-and-send-out-millions-of-messages-an-hour way. You can become a far better e-mail marketer if you study really crappy e-mail marketing. All those e-mails that look like they were written by a troupe of crazed chimpanzees hold invaluable lessons in how to: Get… Read More

Featured

Ian Lurie13 Oct, 2008

17 Features for E-Commerce Success

If you read my previous post, you know I’m pretty angry right now. I don’t like seeing good people get lousy service, especially when it hurts the future of their business. So I’ve channeled that anger into a list of things that any competent internet marketing type should include in an online store. If you’re… Read More