The Portent Blog

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NOTE: This is not legal advice. We are not lawyers. It’s also not the only thing you’ll need to do to reach GDPR compliance for your business. Cookie consent is only one portion of GDPR compliance. Please consult legal counsel before implementing this solution. Another note: This solution works for cookies fired from inside the… Read More

PPC

If you’re new to paid search (or it’s been a while), how to build an AdWords account from scratch can seem daunting. How do you know you’re doing this “the right way”? What are you missing? Could your campaigns be better? The amount of doubt that can seep into your head when you’re at this… Read More

Content Strategy

Confession time. There’ve been a few times where I’ve found myself asking (or exclaiming): Does content marketing actually work? It’s possible this existential crisis was related to a full week spent writing blog posts attempting to espouse the need for the latest organizational software. But there was and is a part of me serious about… Read More

Design & Development

In 2017, I advocated migration to HTTPS before Google started making it seriously painful for sites who didn’t. Well guess what? Google just made the privacy pain official by announcing the Chrome 68 update, which will mark HTTP sites as “not secure.” The browser update is expected to roll out in July 2018. If you’ve… Read More

Content Strategy

Terrible Movie Pitch: The battle for the voice of the internet has begun. In one corner, we have computer programs fortified by algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and other sexy STEM buzzwords. In the other corner, we have millions of copywriters armed with the only marketable skill a liberal arts education can provide: communication.… Read More

Copywriting

In my ninth grade English class, one of the very first things we read was Romeo and Juliet. While most of my friends whined about how hard it was to read and why the sentences had to be so long, I was mesmerized. The language, the characters, the setting — all of it. And it… Read More

SEO

So you’ve decided to play the long-game that is SEO. Fantastic! Depending on your familiarity with search engines, perhaps you’ve told your team or your boss “we’ll work to show up in the number one spot for the one thing that everyone searches in our industry.” [Long, long pause.] It’s a tantalizing thought. But let’s… Read More

Internet Marketing

Over the last two weeks, I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with clients looking for my opinion on the news cycle surrounding Facebook and the congressional hearing that came out of it. These conversations have ranged far and wide. My largest client – an eCommerce giant with millions of fans –… Read More

PPC

Today, for a change of pace we’ll look at how to build the most wasteful, ineffective PPC account possible. The blunders listed here range from ignoring easy wins that could have maximized your ad’s visibility, to lazily throwing ads at every passerby rather than being deliberate and crisp with this incredibly powerful targeting available to… Read More

Social Media

OH GODS FACEBOOK IS DEAD STOP BUYING ADS WE’RE ALL DOOMED Hold on a second. The Facebook privacy quake has already forced the social network to change the way they handle and collect consumer data. That’s changing their advertising platform. And there’s more to come. But before you freak out and pull your clients’ dollars,… Read More

SEO

Anyone reading this has probably already heard the news: Google announced last week that they’re “migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.” Anyone who keeps abreast of SEO news (or works with clients who do) has probably received an email since that announcement wondering nervously what this means for their site. Worry… Read More

Social Media

The Facebook Pixel is a foundational piece of any successful advertising campaign on Facebook. If you’re not familiar with pixel tracking, it’s a piece of code placed on the back-end of your website to accurately track results and users, along with optimizing ads and building audience segments for smarter marketing in the future. It’s common… Read More

Content Strategy

Let’s start with an assumption: As a brilliant digital marketer, you know that understanding your prospects and customers intimately is the cornerstone for creating great content and a successful marketing program. But how can you understand them without asking them the right questions? When you think of formal “user research,” words that come to mind… Read More

SEO

It struck me recently that while we <em>frequently</em> advise our clients and partners on the SEO potential held in their site’s global navigation, how to structure site nav for SEO and UX benefit is something a lot of marketers don’t immediately consider. And that’s a problem. My hope after you read this post is that… Read More

PPC

Mythical sea creatures are really cool, right? Any massive octopus-like thing that can easily bring down large ships is a beast to be reckoned with. My two (very-soon-to-be-three) kids also think the name “Kraken” sounds totally awesome. (This digital marketing tangent brought to you by ongoing early parenthood.) And you know what else is awesome?… Read More

SEO

The Google algorithm has changed! I repeat, the Google algo has changed! Quick, grab your laptop, an emergency thermal blanket, and lock yourself in that bunker with a six-month supply of soylent! Wait… that’s not a surprise at all… Google has said time and time again that there are changes made daily. This time around,… Read More