Firm rubber

Some readers may be surprised to discover that despite the opportunity organic search offers — a recent Shareholic study showed organic search drives nearly half of all traffic, 5 times more than social networks combined — many executive budget holders are still reluctant to make an initial substantial investment in SEO. Other, battle-scarred veterans will not be nearly as surprised. Whatever your perspective, the reluctance by senior management to take the leap and make an initial substantial investment in SEO, while theoretically understandable, often leaves the SEO professional lobbying for budget in a chicken and egg, catch-22 situation. “Show me you can move the needle before I am willing to invest,” they are told; but, without the resources, technology, and budget, it can be difficult to demonstrate substantial ROI in a short period of time. Getting past this hurdle can mean the difference between having a fully-staffed SEO team wielding the latest … [Read more...] about A 3 Part Plan to Overcoming Management’s ‘Show Me Success Before I’ll Invest in SEO’ Catch-22

When I tell a client/friend/colleague they need to add X pages of interesting content to their site, I typically hear one of three answers: 3% of the time: “No problem, I’m on it.” 75% of the time: “But I don’t have anything to write about.” 22% of the time: “No one wants to hear about my product/service. It’s boring.” I’ll ignore the obvious replies, like “If it’s so boring, why does anyone buy it?” or “Then why can you talk about your product for 2 hours at a party?” I understand how tough it can be to come up with material. When you spend all your time working in your business, day in and day out, it can start seeming routine, mundane and so second-nature, you can’t imagine what people would want to know. Here’s a list of a few ways I come up with material, and how I present them to give the most bang for the SEO buck. 1. Q & A / FAQ Sections My favorite option can seem like a … [Read more...] about How To Write When You Have Nothing To Write About

If you’re one of those people who is opposed to blog links, then you’re not thinking of inbound links as a potential to send qualified traffic to your site, and that’s a serious marketing mistake. Occasionally one of our clients will state that they’d no longer like us to pursue blog links, and we argue until we’re blue in the face. Some keywords happen to lend themselves to blogs more than proper sites anyway, especially the really narrow niche ones. Ever seen an entire authority website that is strictly devoted to creating kid-friendly crafts using rubber animal stamps that are made from recycled and reclaimed materials? No, neither have I. However, the narrow niche categories that people create blogs around continually surprises and amazes me. Blogs are easy to build, and many non-technical people have been able to share their passions with the world simply by building a very simple WordPress blog, for example. Why ignore that community? There are many … [Read more...] about Blog Links That Bring Traffic, Not Trouble

Some time ago, I did a blog post called the “Other Long Tail of Search“. When Chris Anderson’s book came out, several smart search marketers realized that the long tail phenomenon applied to our industry as well. If you look at the keywords that drive traffic to your site and plot them according to traffic volume, you get a classic power law distribution curve. A few keywords drive a lot of traffic, but when you add up all the tiny bits of traffic that come from less popular keywords, it adds up to a significant chunk. Suddenly, everyone was talking about the Long Tail of search, and saying why we needed to start paying attention to these dribs and drabs of traffic. The opportunity of the Long Tail The premise of my post was that Anderson’s thoughts about long tail markets was not always applicable to search, because of one fundamental issue. Long tail markets are only practical where there’s little or no overhead required to offer the long tail … [Read more...] about Moving Up The Long Tail

Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Facebook Q3 Earnings: 36 Percent Ad Revenue Growth, 14 Percent From Mobile Facebook has released its Q3 financials and there are some solid numbers in the all-important advertising category. Overall, revenue was up to $1.26 billion for the quarter, a 32 percent gain over Q3 2011 and the third consecutive quarter of higher revenues. The company is reporting $1.09 billion in ad revenue for the quarter, a […] Now Playing: Video Ads Arrive On LinkedIn A new ad type can now be found across LinkedIn’s self-service platform, video ads. LinkedIn Ads users will be able to run a video ad within the standard 300 x 250 px ad location and tie in their YouTube videos and tracking as well. Once a user clicks on a video ad (like the “Announcing: […] The Tablet Pricing Spectrum: Kindle Fire To Nexus 7 To iPad … [Read more...] about Marketing Day: October 23, 2012