Yearly Archives: 2014

Random

Ah, the handoff. Passing a task along to a co-worker seems simple: Send a quick e-mail, or say, “OK, all yours” and you’re done. Wrong. That’s the kind of handoff that sends everything swirling down the potty. There’s a right way to do handoffs. I did a SlideShare about how I approach handoffs. Have a… Read More

PPC

Starting in early November, Google will allow advertisers to use local area codes in their call extensions that utilize Google forwarding numbers.  Previously, you had two options: use your own number and lose the ability to track calls in AdWords, or use an (866) forwarding number randomly assigned to your ads. With this new feature,… Read More

SEO

Link profile maintenance is an unavoidable, recurring task important to the health of your website. Even if you haven’t done anything shady in the past, it is well worth it to pop open the links pointing to your site in Google Webmaster Tools to find out what Google is looking at in regards to your… Read More

Internet Marketing

I am a camp counselor.  You know the kind: clipboard in hand, singing loud and off-key, with a huge smile plastered on my (no-makeup) face.  I know all of the ways to identify a Cedar tree, how to cook beef stew in aluminum foil on the campfire, and the best bed-time stories for a 12… Read More

SEO

^ Note: That’s Ken Colborn up there. Keep reading. It’ll all make sense. ^ We won! Best SEO Campaign of 2014. Allow me to wax philosophical for a second: My team constantly teaches me new stuff. Their skills and approach are a constant inspiration, and I can’t say it enough times: It’s such an honor… Read More

PPC

Occupying your competitor’s SERP space with a pay-per-click ad provides the ability to capture traffic and convert visitors into customers who may have had previous intentions of spending their money elsewhere. While bidding on the branded terms of your competitors is not an innovative practice, poor execution is something we see over and over again.… Read More

Internet Marketing

Yesterday, Google rolled out ‘custom affinities’ — their way to cross-target different audience segments. You can read about it on The Verge: Google rolls out custom affinity audiences ad tool for targeting very specific groups of people We’ve been researching this for a few years now. We started showing our results when I babbled about… Read More

Design & Development

Photo by Jeremy Keith. With the multitude of phones, tablets, phablets, fondleslabs, and other devices on the market, it can be difficult to determine whether or not your new responsive web site is actually responsive. Unless you have a lot of cash to blow on every mobile device that exists, you are probably going to… Read More

Internet Marketing

I talk about all that’s wrong in marketing, tactics vs. strategy, etc. etc. We’re ignoring strategy and sound marketing. We work too hard to game the algorithm at the expense of long-term business development. FYI: For me, gaming the algorithm means finding the fine edge between legitimate and spam, and skating that edge. For me,… Read More

Analytics

Last week, I gave a free webinar on measuring mid-funnel activity using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. If you missed it, here’s the recording: During the webinar, I made mention of several links and resources that would be available afterward. Here’s the link bundle containing everything: http://portent.co/measuring-intent If you don’t have time for either… Read More

PPC

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) should be an integral part of every company’s online marketing strategy. Seriously, it’s legit. After all, what marketer wouldn’t like having totally transparent marketing spend and return data available just a few clicks away? Oh, every marketer likes that sort of data? That’s what I thought. Here’s the problem. Most… Read More

Random

You’ve heard me rant about strategy vs. tactics, and why tactics-only business relationships are getting marketing agencies fired. I’ve realized it’s a much bigger problem than that. If you look at the last 15 years, the drive to ‘productize’ services has ripped the guts out of any business that is paid for an individual’s craft… Read More

PPC

Have you ever stumbled onto a new feature without even realizing it? It just happened to me recently when I told my boss Elizabeth that I had gotten a second, French language, PLA feed going for a client. She looked at me sideways and said “how’d you do that?” Considering she’s covered a PLA base… Read More

SEO

Has this ever happened to you? You’re working on your website, updating title tags and meta descriptions, when all of a sudden you’re panicked at the thought of a truncated title tag! Sure, you kept it under 55 characters, but you know that doesn’t always work, because Google truncates to a pixel width, not a… Read More

Copywriting

So you have all these great ideas for your business marketing: an app that will take over the world, an e-book that will change the industry as we know it, a banner ad people will actually click on. Ideas and passion are fuel for successful campaigns, but you also need the structure that strategy provides… Read More