Monthly Archives: March 2013

Observability, Perseverance, and Dark Data

Having not done so myself, I cannot imagine the trepidation that comes with taking the first steps towards a brand new business venture. What comes with that first step is placing a lot of faith into one’s faculties, competency, and capability to cast aside doubt and soldier on. Paramount to this is the belief that we have predicted the existence of a market for our grand idea correctly. To be incorrect teaches the harsh lesson by forcing a restructure of the idea or complete abandonment. However, if we … Continue reading

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Why I don’t optimize for Quality Score

Larry Kim recently posted on the Wordstream blog about Quality Score having more importance than ever. Typical of Larry’s posts, the article was thorough, thoughtful, and compelling. And I’m going to tell you why I’m ignoring it. Quality Score is a Google-driven metric that is only loosely related to performance. Basically, it’s the wrong metric to chase – and on top of that, the metric itself is flawed. Let me break this down, bullet-point style. (Brace yourselves.) Why is QS a flawed metric? -       Google openly says that … Continue reading

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Monkey with SWOT Analysis and Keyword Research for Fun and Profit

Today’s post is by Chris Sparks , Director of Marketing at iSpionage. The idea of considering a company’s internal strengths and weaknesses and reviewing the opportunities and threats in the external environment provides a useful framework for informing and guiding SEO improvement efforts. SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful analytical tool that can be used by any business – even an online sock monkey retailer – to identify ways to make SEO improvements and progress from a strategically sound foundation.     Internal Factors – Strengths & Weaknesses … Continue reading

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Jump-Start Your SEO, Part 2 – Content

Today’s post is by Jessica Lee, Content and Media Manager at Bruce Clay, Inc. Welcome back to Part 2 of our primer on jump-starting your SEO! In case you missed it, we used Part 1 to discuss the right approach to SEO, the basic components of SEO, and optimization techniques. Today, we’ll talk about something that’s changed quite a bit over the past couple of years: content. If you’ve heard anything about SEO over the past 10 years, you’ve probably heard the term “keyword stuffing” – that is, trying to … Continue reading

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How to Manage PPC for Low-Traffic Products and Services

I recently started working with a client I’d describe as fairly niche. They work in a relatively small area, offering a particular service for customers who use a particular IT brand. Search volumes are low and so is traffic. They’re really happy with the quality of the traffic they’re seeing and are full of praise for the uptake in great leads. But inevitably, they want more. So how can you deliver more when the traffic isn’t there? (Hat tip to all participants in the recent #ppcchat discussion on … Continue reading

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