Articles by Ian Lurie

Jessica Lee from Bruce Clay, Inc. interviewed me as part of this week’s SEMSynergy show. I talk about the Facebook data I presented at Search & Social Hawaii, what’s going to happen to Yahoo!, and why I believe that somewhere else on earth I have an exact duplicate. Kidding on that last part. You can [...]

My clients don’t really have my best interests at heart. They all have names like ‘Joe’ or ‘Jane’ or whatever. So it’s really, really easy to have one of those butt-clenching moments when you realize you just sent a line-by-line chronicling of every onsite SEO issue your pharmaceuticals client has to your unitarian church client. [...]

I’ve put all of the resources I mentioned during my various talks at Search & Social Hawaii into a single Bitly link bundle. You can check it out here. Some of the stuff in the bundle: My slides. Links to past blog posts diving deeper into topics like content curation. Links to scripts I mentioned. [...]

I was sure I’d get crushed by a falling NASA satellite today. It didn’t happen, but it was very motivating. I completed my legacy to the marketing world: A Google Spreadsheet that automatically grabs everything from Linkscape data to Google Analytics numbers to Twitter follower counts. It’s purty: More important, I’ve provided a link to [...]

This isn’t the proposal template we use. But it seems to be the one a lot of other folks use, and they’re all doing OK. So feel free to use this as your template: ========================================= To: Name of client From: Name of you Date: Hopefully today Dear Name of client: Generic introduction with pleasantries. Reference [...]

Let someone else do it. And stay out of their way. There is always a way to export/import your content. Don’t believe someone if they say “You’ll have to cut and paste it.” Analytics should work from day 1 (mine did). Trade three useless graphical features for one good typographical element. You’ll win every time. [...]

I did it before. I’m doing it again. Here’s a list of 59 more things you need to do for your internet marketing campaign. I’ve tried my darndest to avoid duplication, but be patient: Speed up: Get Google Page Speed. Run it on every page of your site. Until you have a 90+, you aren’t [...]

Beware! Google’s new, massive, SERP-sucking sitelinks are growing tentacles. And they’re getting those appendages into more than brands. I’ve been pondering Google’s sitelinks a lot lately. It’s hard not to. Sitelinks are in your face everywhere you go. Do a search for ‘Lucky Brand.’ Between sitelinks and Adwords ads, you can’t even fit in quick [...]

There is some truly horrible keyword advice out there. If you run into any of these in a blog post or e-mail by an ‘expert’, move on. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t take any of their advice. “Buy a keyword-rich domain name.” Yep, that worked wonderfully in 2002. Keyword-rich domains have been faltering for years. [...]

Prospective clients always want to know: What kind of impact will SEO have? How much traffic will I get? I’m an empirical guy. I want to give an answer. But based on what? Well, I did some serious digging into traffic patterns over time across 200 Portent clients, and I have some answers. Warning: This [...]