English: Fence corner, Middle Hill Another fla...

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Have you ever watched something slowly fall into neglect? Maybe it was something around your house. Maybe it was that rotting board on the deck that you watched get progressively worse over time. You didn’t tend to it so one day it finally stop serving you. Maybe it was a relationship that you know needed attention but instead you chose to ignore its importance. As a result, you have a fence that may never be able to be mended. Name any other thing that is as insidious as the creep of decay of anything. It’s nasty business. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Among my students taking my search marketing classes, I am often asked what kind of technical skills are needed to succeed at search engine optimization. I think they are especially intimidated because I was a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, so I definitely have more technical skills than the average SEO practitioner. Like with all consultants, when I am asked if you need to be a programmer to succeed at SEO, I say, “It depends.” But usually the answer is no. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Many of you probably got an e-mail last week from Google announcing its new privacy policy. Every site has a privacy policy, and as a marketer, I understand the need to make some use of the information. After all, Google gives a lot of stuff for nothing–I depend on Gmail, Google Calendar, and many other free functions–so it is only fair that we give something back. I personally am fine with allowing Google use of my data, but I do like to read exactly what they are allowed to do. That’s where I ran into trouble. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in ...

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While neither marketing nor social media are sciences, one needs to use scientific principles to be most effective when it comes to both branding and prospecting online. It doesn’t take an Einstein to succeed in social media marketing, but to does take a scientist. Are you rigorously collecting metrics and data  to see if what you’re doing is resulting in sales conversions or extending your brand or are you relying on things you’ve learned from The Secret? Is your social media marketing campaign relying too much on magical realism, the power of positive thinking, and general superstition? Read the remainder of this entry »

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Newspaper broadsheet referring to the Whitecha...

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Everyone knows that you must place the most important content at the top of the page, right? Everyone knows that you should write like newspaper reporter. Put the most important stuff in the headline, don’t bury the lead, blah, blah, blah. And especially–don’t put important stuff “below the fold.” Below the fold once meant that you keep the good stuff on the upper half of a broadsheet newspaper page, but on the Web it has come to mean that you put the best content at the top of the screen so that people don’t need to scroll down to see it. And I knew all of that. At least I thought I did. Read the remainder of this entry »

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