We came up with 5Rs of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to demystify the process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This 7 1/2 minute video interview with Dr. Ralph Wilson from Web Marketing Today covers how content on your site must be (1) Relevant, (2) build your Reputation, (3) Remarkable, (4) Readable, and (5) of sufficient Reach.
No one knows exactly when the first advertisement was published on a printing press. We do know: In 1609, a British newspaper published an ad for migration opportunities to America. For hundreds of years, ads and print went hand and hand. Then came the Internet. AT&T was the first to pay HotWired to display the first ever online ad; a 468 x 60 banner that came to life on October 25, 1994. Do you remember the days of explosive CPMs?…
Newsletters continue to serve as an effective way for businesses, from retailers to B2B services, to stay in touch with their customers. In my last column, I shared the simple but powerful technique of using point-of-action assurances to convert more visitors into taking the actions you want them to take – such as using the words “we value your privacy” anywhere you want someone to provide you with their e-mail address. Here are some other tips you can use to…
In the space of a few weeks I’ve had my material “ripped off” twice. One instance was OK by me, but one instance was not. The differences open up important questions at the forefront of the new rules involving content, sharing, social media, and copyrights. Today, ideas spread quickly. Volumes of great information are shared through Webinars, e-books, and social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and SlideShare. Tracing an idea, insight, or fact back to its original source can be…
At several conferences that last few months and in several emails, there is one question that keeps popping up, what is the critical skill for marketers to have today. Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist recently said that the “…sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians…The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it.” I agree with Mr. Varian completely. However, I’d like…
This week marks the 15th anniversary of my good friend Dr. Ralph Wilson’s newsletter, Web Marketing Today. Dr. Wilson’s newsletter was among the first newsletters I subscribed to in the mid nineties that got me started on my path to understanding what was happening on the internet. To this day I still open and read almost every newsletter I get from WilsonWeb.com. Dr. Wilson’s first business venture back in 1995 was designing and building websites for small and medium businesses,…
Last week, I moderated several sessions on Emerging Trends at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. A couple of the sessions were about measuring social media. That same morning announcements were made regarding the deals Twitter had struck with Microsoft Bing and with Google. With Microsoft Bing also announcing a deal with FaceBook. The gist of the deals, is that now your tweets or status updates can be found on the search engines. I think of this as a behavior changer…