Yearly Archives: 2012

Internet Marketing

A bold ruler ascends—going by the name Google AuthorRank – and his reign will be a long one. Because, in the very near future, information will take a back seat to who supplies it. We can no longer trust content – there’s just too much of it.  And many of “the facts” are flat-out wrong. … Read More

Internet Marketing

This post is part of a series on social media, Facebook data and the 2012 Presidential election. It updates Portent’s initial research. You can read the original report here. This year’s presidential race continues to be a great marketing study: The niche brand with a universe problem versus the hesitant big brand. After the debate… Read More

Social Media

LinkedIn has finally rolled out the new company pages to everyone. Along with a bunch of little changes, there are a few major ones: The redesign itself, cover images, and the fact that company pages are now visible through the LinkedIn mobile and iPad apps. These hip new LinkedIn company pages are sort of like… Read More

SEO

I presented at Distilled’s Seattle SEO Meetup in September. My topic: Why link building is a lousy strategy, ‘content marketing’ as most marketers define it is just a way to sell more marketing books, and some reasonable alternatives. Here’s the annotated slide deck:

Social Media

For folks who wanted to see a video of my KOMO 4 Primetime appearance: You can’t even tell that, as the camera came on, I was whispering “don’t say um or like don’t say um or like don’t say um or like.” You can see our report on the topic in this blog post. And… Read More

Internet Marketing

Update: Here’s the latest numbers and my take on them: Facebook political update: Debates, spam and a polling slam. Update: You can watch the video of my interview, now, in this blog post. My KOMO TV appearance 10/3 was a bit of surprise, and our research wasn’t written up as prettily as I’d like. Still,… Read More

Internet Marketing

Update: You can watch the video of my interview, now, in this blog post. I’m going to be on KOMO 4 News Primetime tonight, speaking in a 3-minute segment about social media’s growth and influence in this year’s Presidential race. We’ve been researching Facebook/Twitter interactions and the election for about 5 months—I’ll be talking about… Read More

SEO

The “local SEO busters” are inspired by our favorite band of paranormal investigators and eliminators, which had to have been the coolest local business in the 80s, amirite? Who ya gonna call for local SEO help? By now, we hope it’s us. Two weeks ago we made an open call for questions related to Local… Read More

Internet Marketing

I just finished reading the 2012 SEMPO/Econsultancy State of Search Marketing report. Lots of great data in there, but a few things leapt out at me. Some leapt out all smiles and happiness. Others leapt out and tried to bite out my spleen. Whenever I read a report like this, I ask myself three basic… Read More

Random

How is it going, Portent? I’d like to field this question: it is going great. Maybe I’m just feeling great because of what happened last night. What happened last night? You remember that Portent moved downtown to Seattle’s Smith Tower in June. Since then, life has been a lot like the 1996 blockbuster film The… Read More

SEO

As we’ve discussed during the earlier parts of our Local Series, directories and social networks are vital to getting your business found online. Directories feed search engines the data that justifies your business’ inclusion in the local results. Social networks get the word out to your customers and let you connect with them online. But,… Read More

PPC

Well OK, I’m being a tiny bit dramatic. But Google Shopping could totally and utterly screw you over if: You’re not a major brand with an AdWords rep to spoon feed you You’re not familiar with how shopping feeds, shopping engines & AdWords works You haven’t started thinking about this and you’re an ecommerce retailer… Read More

Social Media

When it comes to optimizing your local business for search, you know that directories play a significant role in building authority for a company. But we know you’re cooler than that. You want more from your local search optimization strategy. You want to get SOCIAL!!! Why You Can’t Ignore Social Optimization You can’t afford not… Read More

SEO

For the second installment of the Portent Local Series, I’ll go over why and how directories affect local search visibility and where business owners should focus their time and energy. Local search is like a gyro sandwich: it’s delicious when it works, but the process and criteria for the result can be mysterious. What exactly is… Read More

Analytics

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen that Google Analytics (GA) announced a new beta called Shortcuts: The idea is you can save new report views you’ve just discovered or old report views that you revisit often. How Do I Make a Shortcut? Couldn’t be simpler, really.… Read More