AMP: Do or die? Session recap from SMX West
Contributor Christine Churchill sat in on one of the AMP sessions at SMX West and shares the detailed and contrasting perspectives the panelists plus one Google engineer have on using AMP.
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Results from the Local SEO Ranking Factors Study presented at SMX East
Wonder what factors correlate with strong local rankings? Contributor Christine Churchill summarizes the results of a recent local ranking factors study presented at SMX East 2016.
Best Practices For Google Enhanced PPC Campaigns
If you do any pay-per-click marketing, you are no doubt aware that on July 22, 2013 Google is transitioning all AdWords accounts from “legacy” to “enhanced” campaigns. Google gives account owners the option to make the switch over sooner, but after July 22 Google will make the switch for you. If you are curious about […]
Pro-level Tips To Succeed At Retargeting
One of the popular PPC sessions at SMX Advanced in Seattle was the Pro-level Tips to Succeeding at Retargeting. While many advertisers have plunged into the remarketing world via Google’s basic remarketing program, there are many varieties and programs available beyond Google. This session covered pro retargeting tips, Google remarketing programs, and explored non-Google channel […]
Eight Keyword Research Mistakes That Are Costing You Money
One of the reasons search marketing is so effective is that it delivers information on products and services to people who are actively seeking them out. People enter search terms into a search engine and the engine provides sites and ads that are relevant to the terms. This arrangement is beneficial for the user because […]
Using the Web Developer Toolbar For Search And Usability
One of my favorite plug-ins is the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar. Don’t be fooled by the name. While it’s specifically designed for web developers, the toolbar has many options and features that are also useful to search marketers, usability consultants, and SEO analysts. The toolbar has far too many features to describe in a single […]
Ten Strategies For Avoiding Search Marketing Burnout
Search marketing is the ultimate seductress. It lures you in with the promise of an interesting, exciting career that can actually pay the bills, but soon you’re regularly pulling 12 hour days with no vacations. There’s intense pressure to achieve high search rankings and triple digit ROIs to keep clients happy in a dynamic industry […]
Does Your Site Have Sex Appeal?
The secret’s out: men and women are different—in person and online. Gender differences matter in web design, content, and marketing. It takes more than a girlish color scheme and soft focus photos of smiling children to draw women to your site and earn their loyalty. Color and design matter, but so do content, safety, and […]
Taking The Fear Factor Out Of Paid Search For Small Businesses
A friend recently presented me with a tiny kitten she and her daughter rescued from a busy intersection. This kitten was not particularly adept at walking and would occasionally fall over, but she kept trying, using her tail to keep her balance and become more skilled at walking. I can hear you ask: What in […]
Offline Conversion Tracking: The Missing Metric
“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted…I just don’t know which half.” It’s not a joke: it’s an astute observation from pioneer marketer John Wanamaker. John was a Philadelphia businessman who conceptualized the department store in the early 1900s. Today, 100 years later, we share the same problem Wanamaker faced of identifying […]
Time For A Site Redesign?
Since the 1990s, usability experts and site visitors have been chanting the same web design mantra: Make your site easy-to-use, professional… easy-to-use, professional… Research into how people interact with sites shows that visitors make snap judgements—often within seven seconds of landing at our virtual doorsteps. In fact, the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility Study found […]
Putting Your Small Business On The Map
Online maps: we use them everyday for purposes as varied as finding out how to meet our friends at a new restaurant to sending out invitations to our child’s birthday party. Maps are valuable graphical presentations of how to get to a certain place. Most companies that depend on local customers are beginning to recognize […]
When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss, Part 2
Last week in Part 1 of What You Don’t Know About Your Web Site Can Hurt You, I revealed a few scary secrets most small business webmasters learn about the hard way. If that didn’t scare you away, here are a few more to help the weary web site owner stay in good standing with […]
When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: What You Don’t Know About Your Web Site Can Hurt You
It’s tough to be a small business in today’s fast paced world. Small businesses not only have to know their core industry inside out, but now they have the additional burden of being proficient in online marketing. Since many small businesses have limited staff, most people within these companies wear multiple hats, from CEO to […]
Free Web Design Tools From The Big Three: SEO Friendly Or Not?
Today’s article is a follow-up on our earlier review in which I looked at the capabilities and usability of the big three search engines’ free site creation tools. The focus was on how easy each software product was for a non-technical person to master. The three tools reviewed were Google’s Page Creator, Microsoft’s Office Live […]
Up Close & Personal With Robots.txt
The Robots.txt Summit at Search Engine Strategies New York 2007 was the latest in a series of special sessions with the intent to open a dialog between search engines representatives and web site publishers. Past summits featured discussion on comment spam on blogs, indexing issues and redirects. The subject of this latest summit was to […]
Free Page Creator Tools From The Big Three: Trash or Treasure?
Have a small business in need of a website, but no budget for professional design services? Yahoo, Google and Microsoft all offer free small business site creation tools that can help you develop a professional online presence. Keep reading for an in-depth review of what Office Live Basics, Google Page Creator and Yahoo SiteBuilder include […]
Survival of the Nimble
I bend but do not break. Those six words, penned by poet Jean de La Fontaine in 1668, describe one of the most important strengths of a small business: The ability to be flexible. This ability to react rapidly is one of the most important differences in small versus large companies. Our search world is […]