Biznology

Most of you are aware of the marketing funnel, which describes the different phases in the buyer’s journey. A typical way to slice up the funnel is in terms of  Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy as shown in the diagram from Adam Cohen’s blog at right. With limited budgets, in what phase of the funnel do you concentrate your resources? Some folks believe you invest the lion’s share of your resources at the conversion or purchase phase because it is the most efficient. Others believe the Awareness phase is the most important, because developing it is the surest way to grow your business. Read the remainder of this entry »

Google Analytics (Photo credit: Kansir)

Yesterday, Rob Petersen, Tim Peter and I gave a Webinar on using analytics to make search marketing decisions.  How is your search marketing working? Are you getting the results you want? Maybe you don’t even know how to measure results. Your analytics are essential to your initial search marketing plan and improvement plans. No matter where you are starting from, understanding how to measure where you are and take it to the next level makes all the difference. Do you know how your Web analytics can drive your search improvement plan? Read the remainder of this entry »

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Last month, I said that SEO is the top skill for digital marketers. This might seem outrageous to one who has not read that post. Even to those who have read it, it might seem controversial. Many people in my Twitter stream are calling SEO the bane of the web. @markwschaefer, for example, recently tweeted: “SEO is the plague of the world.” How could it be a vital skill and be such a pariah? The point of this post is to counter these objections and show how SEO skills are so vital to critical web development roles.

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Yesterday, Chris Abraham of Reputation.com presented our latest Biznology® Webinar  about taking back your online reputation.  In today’s 24-hour news cycle, crisis response is essential to every company’s communications strategy; however, after all the dust settles and it looks like you’re in the clear, what happens when all of the negative press finds its way onto Internet search? How do you prevent all this bad news from making it to the first page of Google results?  Or worse, how do you scrub all the bad news that’s already made it to the top half of the first page of the search results?  Is it even possible? It’s not easy – it’s really hard, actually – demanding a terrific investment of resources over time. Read the remainder of this entry »

While I concur with Vizzini, the Sicilian from the movie The Princess Bride, that one should “never get involved in a land war in Asia,” sometimes there’s no escape — and taking on Google’s search index, algorithmic prowess, and the natural results of organic search itself is, indeed, akin to getting involved in a land war in Asia. Most folks know only of the fierce fighting associated with organic search engine optimization (SEO), a process by which we write copy, optimize architecture, use keywords, add hyperlinks, and interlink sites in order to associate a keyword phrase with our particular brand, product, service, and site; another, larger battle is online reputation management (ORM). Read the remainder of this entry »