December 28, 2006 by ian
I get a lot of e-mails like this one: I am the webmaster at blahblah.com and I think our sites are a great match. Would you like to trade links with me? The answer is no. As a search engine optimization device, link trading is worthless. So are so-called 'link triangles', where you link to someone who links to someone else who then links to you. At best, Google and other search engines will ignore you. At worst, they'll ban you for trying to trick them. Trust me. Link. Trades. Don't. Work. On the bright side, you can stop…
Continue Reading SEO Myth Smackdown: Link Trading »
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December 21, 2006 by ian
Search is great, but search and paid ads are even better. We've always assumed that was true. Now two separate studies seem to bear that out. Yahoo, Avenue A/Razorfish and comScore have worked together to research how display and search ads reinforce each other. The conclusion? A combination of paid and organic search, as well as display and search advertising, leads to more traffic and far higher conversion rates. So grabbing the #1 spot on Google for 'widgets' is great, but it doesn't mean you should shut down your paid search campaign just yet. You can read more about…
Continue Reading Search and Display Ads: Closing the Loop »
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December 20, 2006 by ian
OK, that's a bit extreme. I should say '5 reasons pagerank matters less than you think': For those who don't know, PageRank is the value that Google assigns to your site, based on incoming links, the quality of those links, and a number of other things they'll never tell us. If you want to learn way too much about pagerank, Google it and then read one of the many articles that folks have written. Basically, pagerank is an assessment of just how many 'votes' your site gets in the overall hierarchy of the entire internet. That number is then…
Continue Reading 5 Reasons PageRank Doesn't Matter »
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December 19, 2006 by ian
Sony just pulled their site, allIwantforchristmasisapsp.com after they got caught trying to do a little stealth buzz marketing. They launched the site and had writers pretend they were just gamers who loved the new PS3, as opposed to marketers hired by Sony. They were found out when someone discovered that the web marketing firm Zipatoni owned the web address and then traced that back to Sony. Oops. There are some great lessons learned as pointed out by AdAge. But the most important is don't lie, or even flirt with lying. Especially when your audience is a bunch of highly…
Continue Reading Beware the Buzz: Sony and the PS3 »
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December 18, 2006 by ian
At some point, all of us sell to customers who know nothing about that which they're buying. These kinds of customers are intimidated, afraid of making the wrong choice, and very hesitant. On the internet, it's even more of an issue: Many potential customers are nervous simply because they're browsing the web, and don't know what to trust. Then they have to make a decision about the unfamiliar product or service they're buying. Most internet marketing fails to address this audience - sites dive too deep, too fast, hide contact information, create maze-like navigation structures or otherwise intimidate potential…
Continue Reading Seth Godin Discusses The Naive Prospect »
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December 18, 2006 by ian
In Joseph Jaffe's “Life After the 30-Second Spotâ€, he writes that “When creativity is allowed to flourish, innovative ideas flow fast and furiously; when creativity is stifled, mediocrity and status quo are the order of the day.†2 pages later he follows with: “In this day and age, when data is the DNA of success, success becomes a function of the ease and extent to which data is cultivated, harvested, shared, and transformed into the kinds of insight and action capable of altering ingrained perceptions and behaviors and building businesses.†Joseph Jaffe gets it. You can't separate creativity from…
Continue Reading Rethinking Marketing »
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December 15, 2006 by ian
Here's a good question: What's a 'lead'? If you sell stuff online, it's easy to measure conversion by sales. If you don't, though, it can get murky. How do you know if each visit is worth what you spent to get it? Since my click calculator got publicity yesterday, I've had a few folks ask me that. In internet marketing, I think a lead means that a visitor has interacted with you to the point where they'll return, remember you and/or get in touch some other way. Here are my ideas. A visitor might become a lead if they:…
Continue Reading What's a Lead? »
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December 14, 2006 by ian
Why is it that so many people believe my company is a development firm? I suspect it's because we work with numbers, and code, as well as all that 'typical' creative marketing stuff. Well dang it, we are creative. Here's a little holiday fun to prove that we are, indeed, creative folk: http://www.portentinteractive.com/peng Beware, it's a huge time waster... Technorati Tags: internet marketing…
Continue Reading Yes, We Do Creative Stuff »
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December 14, 2006 by ian
Seth Godin just did a brief post about my What is a Click Worth tool. I've had more traffic in the last 2 hours than I normally get in a day. The lesson: You can't make people link to you. You can make them want to, though... Thanks Seth! Technorati Tags: blogging, internet marketing…
Continue Reading The Power of Content »
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December 13, 2006 by ian
The FTC has just ruled that stealth marketing - the practice of hiring bloggers or actors to rave about products online or in person - is unethical. They're going to begin investigating individual complaints, for starters. The implications for online marketing are huge. If you are engaged in word-of-mouth marketing or any form of online buzz marketing including: - Paying bloggers to write about you; - Paying MySpace users to recommend you; - Building web sites that recommend your product, but don't disclose who built them; or anything similar, make sure you clearly state who you are. If you…
Continue Reading FTC Rules Stealth Marketing Unethical »
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December 6, 2006 by ian
I worry a lot about losing my edge. After 11 years in internet marketing, I'm afraid of becoming, well, stodgy. Brian writes about this in his latest post. He's right. Our web site is the least up-to-date of all of the sites we maintain. Why is that? I think it's because keeping your edge (in marketing, anyway) isn't just about keeping your edge. It's about helping your clients keep theirs. Authenticity is about remaining 100% dedicated to your client's best interests, sometimes to the point of telling them they'd be better off working with someone else.…
Continue Reading Keeping Your Edge »
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December 5, 2006 by ian
How much specialization is too much? I've started noticing whole new fields of internet marketing opening up: Blog marketing, social marketing, video marketing, and of course viral marketing (an oldie but still drives me nuts). Supposedly each of these focuses on a distinct space, and someone specializing in, say, Blog marketing, can do stuff that a talented internet marketer can't. Excuse me? Isn't a blog just a web site? How about mySpace? YouTube? Specializing in a tiny sliver of internet marketing just to gain a niche is OK, I guess, but how can marketers serve their clients ethically and…
Continue Reading Internet Marketing and Overspecialization »
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December 2, 2006 by ian
A 'house list' is any list of e-mail subscribers that you've built yourself. Examples include a newsletter e-mail list, a list of past customers, or a list of customers who've asked that you notify them when you have a sale or announcement. House lists generate the best e-mail marketing results. So how do you grow your house list? Here are strategies I use: - The special offer: Invite users to subscribe to your e-mail list in exchange for a deal - a free consultation, a white paper, a discount, etc. all work. - Guilt: Provide customers with a special…
Continue Reading E-Mail Marketing: Building the House List »
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December 2, 2006 by ian
Every few months a client comes to me and says “Now that I'm top 3 for Super Widgets in the unpaid rankings on Google, can we cancel my paid search listings?†Usually, no. Here's two reasons: 1. If you have a top-3 spot in the paid rankings, your competitors don't. You're denying them access to the audience. 2. If customers see your search result in two locations on the same page, they're far more likely to click on one of them. In our tests, an unpaid listing in the top 3 positions gets far more clicks if there's a…
Continue Reading Paid and Unpaid Search: Together, Forever »
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