• Top 10 Obstacles to SEO Success

    January 25th, 2010

    The following list discusses the top 10 obstacles faced by today’s interactive marketers when pursuing search engine optimization success. These problems result from a lack of strategic or technical optimization, but do not discuss the so-called “black hat” or unethical optimization practices still being utilized by many SEO practitioners. These methods would include link farming, paid link ... read more

  • Where to submit to Google, Yahoo and Bing

    October 9th, 2009

    So you have a new website and want it to get indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing? No problem. Here are the submission pages for each one. Just submit your homepage, and they will crawl the rest of your site if it's built or you have an XML (or regular) sitemap page. Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/ (no acc... read more

  • Google Does Not Use Meta Keywords, But Yahoo Does

    October 8th, 2009

    As stated on Google's Webmaster Blog at Blogspot, they do not (and have not for a while) used Meta Keywords to impact their algorithmic ranking for web search. They do state that they can use it for enterprise search, but not general web sear... read more

  • How to Measure Social Media

    September 28th, 2009

    Lately there has been a lot of discussion about how to effectively measure social media campaigns. Should we measure impressions on a CPM basis, should we measure a 1st step interaction such as a video play or should we measure the user interaction in length of time? Perhaps we should we try to track social to an ROI level as we do with organic search engine optimization, pay-per-click (paid searc... read more

  • 11 Successful Social Media Case Studies

    September 2nd, 2009

    A client actually sent this to me today. It's a great document with 11 successful case studies, as compiled by the gang at Marketing Profs. Click to: Download 11 Case Studies Document... read more

  • The "unintentional" Crispin Porter + Bogusky social experiment

    August 31st, 2009

    When you go completely social with your website, trying to fully embrace "social media", the media loves you. You get a bunch of positive write-ups and mentions, and there is the usual web buzz. And then you outsource some work and piss off some hard-core designers. And they talk. And talk. And talk. Which isn't usually a problem. Unless your website is pulling in a bunch of social media feeds abo... read more

  • Bing This: Major Changes and Search Optimization for Bing

    August 31st, 2009

    We've been getting a lot of questions about optimizing for Bing. So to separate fact from fiction, and to provide some helpful tips, we thought we should address a few frequent questions. Q: What is Bing? A: Bing is Microsoft's recently re-branded search platform. Microsoft calls it a "decision engine", rather than a search engine. Although, it's really still ... read more

  • Mom, are you on Facebook?

    August 26th, 2009

    Social media isn’t just for the young anymore; it’s also for the young at heart. I have been noticing the rapid adoption of social media by those a generation or even two, older than me. This past December, I was visiting my family for Christmas and my mother asks me “how do I get on facebook?” I quickly replied back “Mom, you don’t.” Perhaps for selfish reasons. I really didn... read more

  • Off-Page Optimization

    August 16th, 2009

    There are two important elements in organic optimization. 1. On-page Optimization 2. Off-page Optimization Both are equally important, although implementation of a successful strategy for each is drastically different. On-page revolves around the changes made to the website itself to increase indexing and optimization of strategic keyword phrases. Off-page optimization refers to the strateg... read more

  • Google "Caffeine"

    August 12th, 2009

    Google has launched a test version of their enhanced search algorithm. We gave it a test and noticed a few things that differentiated "Caffeine" (the project alias) from the traditional Google result engine. -The results seem to come faster - almost 2x as fast as in the current Google search, although since there are no ads on the test version, it's hardly a fair comparison -There seem to be l... read more

  • Organic Optimization Process

    August 6th, 2009

    While working on a presentation, I put together a quick chart to help illustrate the process of Organic Optimization. I thought it might be interesting to share. As you can see, Organic Optimization relies heavily on both on-page and off-page optimization, and is a true ongoing process (at least if you want to achieve good results). Unfortunately, a lot of people are looking for a quick "one-time ... read more

  • Some "SEO's" give SEO a bad name

    July 6th, 2009

    I was reading through some general SEO materials before a presentation and I got a bit sidetracked into reading about historical SEO and the changes that have taken place over the years. In the last 6 years that SEO has really become something of a pop phenom, it has changed greatly. But, some things have not changed...I still get emails from email addresses like "bobjsalquitz@seo-blast-top-ran... read more

  • Top 100 Social Media Websites

    June 22nd, 2009

    We spent a little time over the past week compiling a list of the top 100 social media websites, as reported by Alexa. Most of what we found was expected, some was not. For example, www.Scribd.com was number 7 on the list. We knew the document sharing tool was getting more and more popular, but didn't realize it has already ascended... read more

  • Interactive Shop Sapient Acquires Ad Firm Nitro Group

    June 17th, 2009

    For years it seemed that every traditional advertising firm was acquiring a cool trendy digital shop to try and balance out their portfolio offering. The day has come where interactive agencies have started to acquire traditional ad firms. Perhaps this is the true "mainstreaming" of interactive that we've been waiting to see.  Here's a good Wall Street Journal article about read more

  • Twitter Use During Iran Election

    June 17th, 2009

    I never thought i'd see the day when the US State Department would ask Twitter to reschedule maintenance for the site until later, as it was determined to be important in the news coverage of the Iranian Election. I suppose there are other uses for the start-up Microbogging site than the usual updates letting me know my friends have gotten a $5 footlong, or that a relationship break-up is looming.... read more

  • What’s the Tweet all about?

    June 11th, 2009

    It’s kind of ironic that I found this article today when I was catching up on my latest industry news. About a month ago myself and a few of the Lucid guys were talking about how social media seems to be the "cure-all" right now, and everybody wants it. Yet most people don't know why they want it, or if it even makes sense for their business. Don’t get me wrong, I love facebook. Yet, social m... read more

  • The recession is helping online marketing?

    June 3rd, 2009

    The marketing world has changed drastically in the past ten years. Today I was thinking about how this has impacted my life. I’m almost 30 and back in the 90's, I routinely read the morning paper and used the yellow pages for business references what seemed like years ago. Pretty normal things to do. Most people got the news from the morning paper and when you needed a local plumber, you went to... read more

  • Google Lifts Ban on Trademark Use

    May 15th, 2009

    I'm actually shocked that it took Google this long to fold and give in on this. Until now, advertisers on Google's Adwords platform, have been unable to use specific trademark names and phrases in their advertisements titles, because of an inhouse Google Trademark Policy. That all changed today when Google lifted it's ban in it's trademark policy on using trademark keywords in the titles of ads pl... read more

  • Is the Internet the next California?

    May 6th, 2009

    California, you say? Yes, as in brown outs and loss of energy in the summer months. The state of California is maxed out in terms of its energy usage. But what about the internet, could the World Wide Web be running out or room? Is there really a chance of the Internet reaching its limits and having rolling blackouts? Here is an interesting link that gives you some food for thought. I hi... read more

  • What's a Good Website Conversion Rate?

    May 4th, 2009

    This week I found myself answering the age old question, "what is a good website conversion rate?". This is a great question to ask, however there is no concrete answer. The fact of the matter is that a good conversion rate is going to vary depending on critical conversion elements such as 1) what the conversion goal is, 2) how much commitment are you asking the customer/lead to make, 3) how easy ... read more

  • Comparison of Online PR Wires

    April 26th, 2009

    A lot of clients seem to come to us having experimented with one Online Press Release distribution source or another. Usually, the first question is whether the distribution service they are using is the correct one. I thought it might be helpful to provide a little comparison, based on our experience, of when each one is most applicable. read more

  • A/B versus Multivariate Testing

    April 24th, 2009

    A/B testing is nothing more than performing a test of two elements and measuring the response. It's called A/B testing because you are likely testing two elements against each other, such as element "A" and element "B" to see which element increases the liklihood of conversion. These elements could be a "50% off" header versus a "Buy 1 get 1 free" header. When performing an A/B te... read more

  • 8 Principles of Website Conversion

    April 22nd, 2009

    Often when we sit down to review a new client website marketing, the first thing we encounter is a problem with their website conversion process. I don't think conversion optimization requires a PHD, but sometimes it does take some critical thinking to figure out what is stopping customers from converting. It can be a lack of a call-to-action, loud colors, painfully long copy or simply no way to c... read more