Articles by Portent Team
Portent Team // 19 Mar, 2015
International SEO Strategy Guide – Plus a Flowchart!
I’ve noticed there’s something we’re sorely missing in our marketing mix: flowcharts. Making sure that Portent has mo’ flo’ to offer has become of my new life goals. As part of this endeavor, I created the following International SEO Strategy flowchart to help those who are trying to decide what the best structure is for… Read More
Portent Team // 18 Dec, 2014
Is Duplicate Content Really a Problem?
The short answer is yes. We have written extensively on the subject before: SEO Obviousness: Duplicate content sucks, Duplicate content sin #1: Pagination, Duplicate content sin #2: Default page linking, SEO worst practices: The content duplication toilet bowl of death, and 5 SEO Strategies We Swear Aren’t Going Anywhere. So we have done our due… Read More
Portent Team // 18 Nov, 2014
My (Insanely Large) List of SEO Tools & Other Useful Resources
I’m just about to reach the 5 year mark working in the online marketing industry, and one thing that I’ve always found remarkable is how open and sharing people in this line of work tend to be. Whether it’s strategies, tactics, updates, techniques or tools – folks in this space do a lot of sharing,… Read More
Portent Team // 28 Aug, 2014
Guide to Personalized Search Results
If you grew up watching Sesame Street like me, you might have heard this song: One of these things is not like the others,One of these things just doesn’t belong,Can you tell which thing is not like the othersBy the time I finish my song? The search results that you see within your browser are… Read More
Portent Team // 19 Aug, 2014
Creative Process: Where Does All the Time Go?
In college, when we asked our teachers how to assign a price to our art, they would tell us to charge whatever it was worth to us. This answer was thoroughly infuriating because we wanted a ‘correct’ number. What’s the equation? Is each square inch of canvas (or wood, or paper) worth a certain amount?… Read More
Portent Team // 5 Aug, 2014
How to Go Incognito for International Search Queries – and Why
The first thing to do when you’re starting out your quest to be the master of international search is to go incognito. You can’t just search on Google.com for your product/service and expect to see the same thing that everyone else in the world will. Google personalizes search results according to your location, your search… Read More
Portent Team // 17 Jul, 2014
SOS: Save Our (Organic) Social
It is not exactly breaking news that brand page organic social efforts are being thwarted by Facebook’s algorithm changes, which are making it harder than ever to get your organic social updates seen by your desired audience. But all hope is not lost! There is a strategy that, if implemented correctly, can potentially improve your… Read More
Portent Team // 23 Jun, 2014
Marketers Dying By A Thousand Data Points
Data tells a story about the past, and helps us understand what we can expect in the future. But just like life, data has no guarantees. Even with all the data points and information in the world, it takes an experienced mind to transform insight into meaningful action. Marketers need to fill the gap between… Read More
Portent Team // 20 May, 2014
Content for the Customer Buying Cycle
Are you looking to bring in more customers to your site and sell more products? One way to do this is by looking at the customer buying cycle (also known as the marketing funnel). This helps meet the needs of your customers at every step of the buying process. Every time a customer makes a… Read More
Portent Team // 22 Apr, 2014
Marketing Tactics so Contagious, Even a Professional Isn’t Immune
I like to think I’m immune from marketing. Working day in and day out with all the tips and tricks can make the underlying message of a soft sell glow in my brain like a neon light. And it makes me want to run the other way. Reading Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah… Read More
Portent Team // 27 Mar, 2014
How Not to be an #EPIC Social Media Fail
Alright, we all know which brands are nailing it when it comes to social media. I’m lookin’ at you Uber, BuzzFeed, Seattle PrideFest, Oreo, Nike, NO H8, and Coca Cola. These names represent a variety of businesses, brands and events. But despite their differences, every one of these companies has achieved great success by being… Read More
Portent Team // 10 Mar, 2014
Rankings Aren’t All That: How to Really Track SEO Improvements
There are LOTS of people out there that don’t understand what SEO is and how you do it. I wish I had a dollar for every time I was told to go do my “SEO magic” by a client. These same people are hungry to see results to make sure that you are actually doing… Read More
Portent Team // 5 Mar, 2014
Internet Marketing Lessons Learned from Walking the AWP Book Fair
A writer at a book fair is a lot like a teenaged girl loose on the Internet with her mom’s credit card. The wonder! The excitement! The expense! When that writer is also a marketer, you can be sure she’ll be looking at the displays! The giveaways! The opportunities to build brand awareness! This is… Read More
Portent Team // 19 Feb, 2014
Advertising Will Soon Reach a Digital Tipping Point
While television continues to have its strong hold on ad dollars, digital is a rapidly growing category and there are no signs of it slowing down. Take for instance Google’s $3.2 billion cash acquisition of Nest, with many reports suggesting it’s a play to better target ads in the home. These investments are increasingly putting… Read More
Portent Team // 30 Jan, 2014
Why SEOs Should Dump CSS Sprites for Icon Fonts
The SEO community and the web development community can often be at odds. One thing they’ll both agree on, however, is the importance of performance. The SEO’s favorite site speed tool is Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which I’ve written about before. We’ve all seen this among the suggestions: CSS sprites. One tactic to improve site speed… Read More