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Showing posts from August, 2009

Best of 2008: Random but Interesting, Part 2

Looking for some off-the-beaten-trail ideas for driving more site traffic? Getting more out of those expensive marketing conferences? Doing a better job of training employees and qualifying leads? Meeting the biggest challenges in b2b marketing head-on? Then you're in the right place! You'll find all of that and then some here in my final list of brilliant but uncategorized posts from the past year. 39 Actionable Ideas For Driving Traffic To Your Website by Forbes Jason DeMers offers 39 ideas for increasing traffic to your business website, from focusing on long-tail keywords to creating a top 10 website post. Increase ROI From Marketing Conferences by TopRank Online Marketing Blog Lee Odden provides an outstanding guide to making the most of marketing conferences. Networking, gaining knowledge and gathering material for blog content are just a few of his recommendations. How to avoid contextual tragedies by iMedia Connection J. Brooke Aker writes that "L

How to Create a Cool But Clean Social Media Email Signature

One of the most popular posts ever on this blog was The Social Media Email Signature , in which I noted that "In the old days, email signatures pretty much just mirrored business card information (which is still the case for most people)...A growing number of Web 2.0-savvy executives, however, are breaking out of the old mold and creatively integrating social networking into their email sign-off." It clearly struck a cord, and traffic-wise, it didn't hurt that Guy Kawasaki tweeted the post. It helped. A lot. In fact. The post included several creative examples of social media signatures, though most are are text-based. Lately, you may have seen more examples that incorporate graphical elements, like this: Mike Barran Marketing Executive Results Driven Marketing mike@digitalrdm.com (It's difficult to match the exact appearance in Blogger; my actual Outlook signature is shown to the right.) If you use Gmail, Hotmail or another web-based email service, the easi

Best of 2008: Amusing, Creative and Just Plain Odd, Part 1

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Amusing, Creative and Just Plain Odd on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Web 2.0 naming conventions SEO copywriting mistakes search engine rap Christopher Richards sloppy copy Steven Wright Copyblogger Brian Clark Small Business Search Marketing Matt McGee Searchles Don McMillan The Chronicles of George del.icio.us tags: Web 2.0 naming conventions SEO copywriting mistakes search engine rap Christopher Richards sloppy copy Steven Wright Copyblogger Brian Clark Small Business Search Marketing Matt McGee Searchles Don McMillan The Chronicles of George icerocket tags: Web 2.0 naming conventions SEO copywriting mistakes search engine rap Christopher Richards sloppy copy Steven Wright Copyblogger Brian Clark Small Business Search Marketing Matt McGee Searchles Don McMillan The Chronicles of George Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

SEO Link Spam - What Is It and Who's to Blame?

Over the years, unscrupulous black hat SEO scammers have used a variety of tricks—keyword stuffing, link farms, white text and others—to try to manipulate search results, and the algorithms used by Google, Yahoo and the other search engines have evolved to identify and squelch the effectiveness of such nefarious tactics. A more vexing issue for the search engines is dealing with link spam, not only because it is difficult to detect and address algorithmically, but because there isn't even a clear definition. As a website owner, the term represents emails like this: Dear webmaster, As a part of ongoing campaign to increase the Link Popularity of My website I am looking for some good potential sites like yours. I review your site and find that, in SEO perspective your site is Perfect. Also, this would be a great resource for my visitors too. I would request you to consider listing my site. Title:- My Spammy Website URL:- http://www.indiaspamforyou.com Description:- mi

Social Media + Email Marketing Equals: One Company Doing It Right

Though social media is all the rage, email marketing also remains strong, with 85% of companies planning to increase spending in this area in the second half of 2009 according to a recent study. Email in many cases is taking budget dollars away from other channels because it remains reasonably effective, highly measurable and relatively inexpensive. Combining social media with email marketing holds tremendous potential, as the tools are complementary. Email is permission-based interruption marketing; social media is participatory. Email is outbound, social media is inbound. Email (in segmented campaigns at least) lets you have a monologue with prospects based on group characteristics; social media enables dialogue with individuals. One example of a company executing this combination well is Aquent , a marketing temporary help agency based in Boston. The firm has used email for years to market itself to and maintain contact with both prospective corporate customers and individual t

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 4

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: social media marketing iMedia Connection John Gray Facebook CRM SEOmoz Rand Fishkin ReelSEO Grant Crowell Search Engine Journal Ann Smarty SEO Review Jason Keath social media model The POST Method social strategy Groundswell Forrester Josh Bernoff Matthew Pollock del.icio.us tags: social media marketing iMedia Connection John Gray Facebook CRM SEOmoz Rand Fishkin ReelSEO Grant Crowell Search Engine Journal Ann Smarty SEO Review Jason Keath social media model The POST Method social strategy Groundswell Forrester Josh Bernoff Matthew Pollock icerocket tags: social media marketing iMedia Connection John Gray Facebook CRM SEOmoz Rand Fishkin ReelSEO Grant Crowell Search Engine Journal Ann Smarty SEO Review Jason Keath social media model The POST Method social strategy Groundswell Forrester Josh Bernoff Matthew P

Book Review: Blogger -- Beyond the Basics

If you write a blog on Google’s Blogger platform—or ever have any plans to—you need to pick up a copy of Blogger: Beyond the Basics: Customize and promote your blog with original templates, analytics, advertising, and SEO (From Technologies to Solutions) by Lee Jordan. This is the definitive guide to planning, designing, pimping out, promoting, monetizing, measuring and SEO-ing a Blogger blog. The book explains the techniques to accomplish all of these objectives through the fictional story of Georgia Peach, a woman passionate about fresh fruit. Procedures are illustrated using examples from Georgia planning, developing and promoting her Fruit for All blog. The story begins with Georgia researching competitive and related blogs, planning her strategy, and then customizing a Blogger template to create just the look she’s after by replacing the header image, modifying fonts and colors, changing the layout and customizing the sidebar. Along the way, the author cites helpful tools su

How (and Why) to Do Lead Nurturing Right

This content has been moved to How to do Lead Nurturing Right on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Marketo definitive guide to lead nurturing demand generation Brian Carroll Scott Albro content marketing lead scoring accelerator campaigns ROI of lead nurturing del.icio.us tags: Marketo definitive guide to lead nurturing demand generation Brian Carroll Scott Albro content marketing lead scoring accelerator campaigns ROI of lead nurturing icerocket tags: Marketo definitive guide to lead nurturing demand generation Brian Carroll Scott Albro content marketing lead scoring accelerator campaigns ROI of lead nurturing tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2008: Cool Web Tools, Part 2

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Cool Web Tools on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: web analytics Firefox plugins SEO analytics tools Clicky Twitter analytics Facesaerch Animoto Feedoor feedkiller Search Engine Land Josh Dreller FireFTP FireShot Search Engine Journal Ann Smarty Quarkbase HubSpot Website Grader Cubestat SmashingApps AN Jay free web conferencing service Dimdim Skydeck PDFescape del.icio.us tags: web analytics Firefox plugins SEO analytics tools Clicky Twitter analytics Facesaerch Animoto Feedoor feedkiller Search Engine Land Josh Dreller FireFTP FireShot Search Engine Journal Ann Smarty Quarkbase HubSpot Website Grader Cubestat SmashingApps AN Jay free web conferencing service Dimdim Skydeck PDFescape icerocket tags: web analytics Firefox plugins SEO analytics tools Clicky Twitter analytics Facesaerch Animoto Feedoor feedkiller Search Engine Land Josh Dreller FireFTP FireShot