Jeff Cotrupe, Founder and CEO
One of my favorite comedy lines ever, which in this case emanated from the magically twisted mind of Steven Wright, goes like this: “I bought some batteries. But they weren’t included. So I bought ‘em again…I bought some powdered water. But I didn’t know what to add…”
Open letter to Steven and ROW (rest of world): When it comes to websites, I can tell you exactly what to add.
It’s always a good idea to keep your keywords and metatags complete and current on a website; many search engines still key on that when deciding whether to list you in search…
When was the last time you saw an online display ad you’d click on? Or, better put, when was the last time you clicked on an online display ad? I seriously never had unless I did once in 1994 or something. But I saw this ad and was intrigued enough, and entertained, that I’d click.
I had to write this post first, so I haven’t yet. It’s my next order of business. Good job Very Short List, whoever you are and whatever you’re selling!
(i.e., Why try to game the system when you can do just plain good work?!)
— Abigail
- - -…
You’ll find this bit of news all over the web; Google is implementing search suggestion over the next week or so. What you may not find all over the web are SEO tips for maximizing traffic from these suggestions. Fear not, friends. SEOBook is ahead of the game on this one, and lays out what other features Google is implementing, the effect they will have on search, and what YOU can do to stay optimized.
Here’s what you need to know from this post:
- Google is also implementing automatic matching and updating the quality score.
- Industry keywords may consolidate- outlier terms will become more difficult to…
I’ve often suggested to clients that they run pay per click campaigns targeting keywords related to their brand name(s). Usually, there’s resistance. “After all”, they say, “we already rank first in the organic results for our brand name. Why would we run a paid ad when we can get traffic from our brand-related terms for free?”
In rare situations, this point is valid. But, there are only a few convincing reasons why you should, at a bare minimum, run pay per click campaigns for terms related to your brand name.
Bad Organic Ranking
Sometimes companies have trouble getting a top organic ranking for…
Without comments, blogs aren’t conversations, aren’t fulfilling their mission. They’re de-facto old-school articles being published. That works for some of the big guys who turned off comments because they weren’t enriching the dialogue (Calacanis, please do read this). In fact, when bloggers turn off comments for thoughtful reasons, it shows how much they respect and value the role of comments and don’t want their sites to be places where comments detract or are otherwise counterproductive.
But for the rest of the blogosphere, comments are a reflection of the blog’s ability to engage readers. And many bloggers love a lively debate with people…
The top 50 online advertisers (measured by media value, via ClickZ) in April of this year included 21 financial institutions (A full 42% of the biggest spenders). The top spender 
among those was Countrywide Home Loans, which has been at the center of the mortgage crunch. I wonder what share financial institutions — especially mortgage related ones — had in previous years?
Compare: 7 out of the 50 online advertising giants are tech companies, 6 are media and entertainment, and 4 are retail. The rest have smaller shares.
Oddities: University of Phoenix makes it onto the list twice at 4 and 24 (online…
I just discovered full online episodes of shows (Hell’s Kitchen) after the DVR Comcast supplied us with started recording partial shows and black screen a lot. So this story (Silicon Alley Insider) about ABC.com demographics was interesting to me…
Among ABC’s findings:
- 54% of online viewers recall the brand name of a sponsor, vs 22%, on average, for network TV.
- Online audiences peak on Friday night, the day after the network’s biggest shows, “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” air on Thursday.
- On a nightly basis, online audiences peak at 10 pm, in the middle of primetime.
- The biggest segment of online viewers (29%) are under 24, and…
Ah, the Google Content Network…maligned and often rightly so. This piece (Search Engine Land) goes into a lot of detail about why it can be very ineffective for advertisers — which catch you up on why it ends up as #1 on lists like this one (Apogee Marketing). The Search Engine Land article, however, also gives an excellent walkthrough of how to do a content-matching campaign that works.
With this approach you will be significantly closer to targeting your content match campaign. Better still, since many people simply turn this feature off, and most others use their search keywords, you will have a…
