 | March 13, 2013When you add great content to your website on a regular basis and get the word out about it to your target audience, you'll gain more rankings, traffic, conversions, leads and sales.
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 | January 30, 2013It seems that after switching to a 3-party shopping cart I no longer have individual keyword conversion rates and costs in my Google Analytics.
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 | December 19, 2012By now you've heard the news that a few of the major SEO tool companies will no longer be providing ranking reports as part of the website data they supply. While you are probably still in shock and scrambling to figure out what to do about it, if you're serious about your online marketing, it's actually the best thing that could happen to you.
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 | October 31, 2012Karon Thackston provides you with some easy and valuable ways to achieve desired conversion rates is through copy optimization. Read More >> |
 | September 5, 2012I've put together some of the main metrics that I like to look at when I'm evaluating the SEO progress of a website, as well as how to find or gather those metrics via reports and dashboards. Read More >> |
 | May 16, 2012Today I'm happy to showcase an interview about Google AdWords with my colleague and friend, Pauline Jakober, CEO of Group Twenty Seven. Read More >> |
 | February 22, 2012Does your marketing lead anywhere? Is there a plan and a purpose behind your content, or do you just toss something out there and see what happens? Read More >> |
 | February 22, 2012Do you have a content marketing funnel or plan? Read More >> |
 | January 11, 2012If you're thinking that implementing the Rel-Author tag on your content isn't worth the trouble, Jill Whalen provides 5 6 reasons why it's super important. Read More >> |
 | November 16, 2011The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page's ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns. Read More >> |
 | November 16, 2011What's your formula for writing Meta description tags? Read More >> |
 | October 19, 2011How do you measure the success of your SEO work? Read More >> |
 | October 19, 2011Similar to weight loss being a poor main goal for your health and fitness regime, where your pages rank for specific keyword phrases is also a poor main goal. Read More >> |
 | September 21, 2011Is there any harm in going in adding a Google Analytics account ID and getting rid of the Omniture info in the code?
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 | August 10, 2011How many different conversions do you measure on a typical website? Read More >> |
 | August 10, 2011Adding value to your website through free articles, blog posts, videos, and any other type of content that may be helpful to those at the not-ready-to-buy-yet stage, is a great way to gain extra traffic. The problem (if you want to call it that) with all this "value-added" content is that it brings those very people who will rarely convert into a lead or a sale. Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011I have noticed for a long time that we have many keywords that we will rank fine for, but then one week they are not ranked at all and the following week they will be back to around the original ranking. Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011What is the protocol on using competitors' brand terms to drive traffic to our site for related services? Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011Registrations From PPC Campaign Stopped Read More >> |
 | November 17, 2010What's the most creative content you've added to a website that enhanced its value? Read More >> |
 | October 20, 2010So many people think that the term "long-tail keywords" means keyword phrases that have more than 2 words in them, but that's not at all what they are. Read More >> |
 | October 6, 2010Our CEO is looking for a specific goal in site traffic generated by organic search, based on our implementing SEO recommendations.
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 | October 6, 2010What's your measure of a successful SEO implementation? Read More >> |
 | August 25, 2010When you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you offer? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!
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 | August 11, 2010Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future. Read More >> |
 | July 14, 2010Google AdWords Setup, Tune-ups, Audits Read More >> |
 | June 2, 2010In last week's newsletter you mentioned appending email signature links with campaign tracking codes. Can you please detail how to do this?
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 | June 2, 2010I have a question about the duplicate content issue when you append tracking codes. But, as a safety measure to avoid duplicate content, I've included a 301-redirect in the htaccess file...
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 | May 19, 2010Think you're doing a good job of tracking and measuring the success of every link to your website that gets announced to the world in some fashion? Do you ever wonder where some of your "Direct Traffic" came from? Read More >> |
 | May 19, 2010How often do you view your web analytics? Read More >> |
| March 10, 2010By Karon Thackston Just for a moment, pretend you're a fly on the wall in my office. I'm on the phone with a prospective client and things are going well. We're talking about their target audience and they seem to have all the right answers. I am confident that these people "get it." Then the conversation takes a sharp left turn. Read More >> |
| January 6, 2010I've been SEO'ing websites long before the 21st century began. Sometimes I feel I've been touting the same SEO processes and procedures for the past 10 years. Read More >> |
| October 28, 2009Sometimes choosing which company to buy from is about like deciding which brand of canned peas is the best. To make matters worse, the copy on most websites doesn't offer any help. Read More >> |
| September 16, 2009Today we have another guest article from SEO copywriter and trainer Karon Thackston. Read More >> |
| September 2, 2009I have a corporate client that is planning to purchase a company in Switzerland and they are wondering if I can do the SEO. But then it dawned on me, checking their rankings with a U.S.-based IP address might deliver different search results…do you think? Read More >> |
| August 19, 2009Few things in an SEO's life are sweeter than watching one page of a site hit pay dirt for a high-volume, high-relevance keyword in Google. Read More >> |
| July 8, 2009To further add to your web analytics knowledge, today I'm going to explain how you can more accurately measure email and social media marketing efforts by using tracking links to create "campaigns" in GoAn. Read More >> |
| June 24, 2009Have you ever noticed that ecommerce sites have their own set of challenges when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)? If you're a small ecommerce site owner, I'm sure you have. One reason is that copy plays such a vital role in the optimization process. Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009Do you think a positioning video has value on a website, or does it interfere with the structure and architecture of the website?
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| April 29, 2009I've spent the last few weeks reviewing scads of websites for our new SEO Website Review clients and have noticed a lot of interesting things in the process. Read More >> |
| March 18, 2009Today I'll show you how to create your own social media monitoring and marketing strategy that complements your SEO campaign. While I'm going to talk mostly about Twitter, you can apply much of this info to other social media as well. Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009My question is, how should SEO services be evaluated? In other words, what measurable objectives beyond landing above the fold are appropriate? Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009Karon Thackston and I were discussing copy length the other day (yeah, we're total geeks when it comes to that stuff) and decided to share our conversation via a podcast. You can click to it and listen from Karon's copywriting workshop page. Read More >> |
| January 7, 2009While traveling by plane to Florida to visit my grandmother for the holidays, we were sitting next to a couple with 2 small children, probably around 2 and 3 years of age. We expect a lot of children during holiday travel, and typically it's not that big of a deal. With this family, however, it was a different matter. Read More >> |
| October 8, 2008It's funny how we, as website owners, don't always think like our visitors. A course of action that might seem perfectly obvious to us may stop our visitors right in the middle of their buying process. Take, for instance, e-commerce–type copy. Do you realize that what happens after your customers read your copy could make or break your sale? I'm not talking about shopping cart abandonment. I'm talking about good communication that keeps the buying cycle moving forward. Let me give you a real-world example. Read More >> |
| September 10, 2008I admit it. I'm a Google Analytics junkie. I try to stay away, but every now and then I hear it calling my name and I break down and log in. I feel the familiar rush of excitement running through my veins almost instantly. And I know anything else I may have planned to do that day won't get done because I'll be in my own world for hours. My analytics world. Just me and my stats. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh… Read More >> |
| July 30, 2008The question is a rather odd one: "What's your conversion rate?" The correct response would be another question: "Which conversion rate?" What most people are really asking is how many sales have you made? But the sales process – in almost all cases – takes more than one step. Read More >> |
| April 30, 2008If you know where to look, you can easily find clues about what people are feeling. Once you discover that, making the connection is simple. Read More >> |
| April 23, 2008Forum member "Christopher" is looking for help to improve his checkout conversions. Read More >> |
| March 26, 2008Let me enlighten you about something you might not have considered. Ultimate conversions from pay-per-click (PPC) ads come from a process, not a single event. Oftentimes, online marketers focus on the effects of PPC copywriting and the clickthrough rate it achieves. That clickthrough rate is thought of as the end-all, be-all for the campaign. But the overall goal of PPC copywriting is not to get people to click. Clicking a PPC ad is merely step one. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to take action once they reach your site. Read More >> |
| March 26, 2008Forum member "iloveseo2" wonders how one can prove one's return on investment and track conversions with SEO. Read More >> |
| February 20, 2008Today's guest article is a very informative one on paid-search campaigns by my friend Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media. Mona is considered by many to be the authority on the Yahoo Search Marketing platform. She's recently completed the world's only guide to Yahoo Search Marketing, called " Mastering Panama: A special report on Yahoo's new search marketing platform." Read More >> |
| January 23, 2008You briefly hit on ROI and basically described perfectly a dilemma I have. We are a B2B manufacturer of machinery that costs anywhere from the 10's of thousands to the 100's of thousands each. We sell a handful of these machines each year. Consequently, the buying cycle can take up to a year or more. How would you suggest we figure ROI and conversions for this kind of business? Read More >> |
| November 28, 2007Market Motive is a new, subscription-based website which brings together
some of the top minds in the Internet marketing world to teach you SEO, Web
analytics, PPC, social media, online publicity, and more. Read More >> |
| November 14, 2007Lyris, Inc. is combining the power of keyword research from Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery, PPC campaign management functionality, and ClickTracks into one powerful bid-management tool called “BidHero.” Read More >> |
| October 31, 2007Karon Thackston has just finished her new ebook on how to write successful
PPC ads. It’s so new, in fact, that it hasn’t even been announced to the
general public! Read More >> |
| October 17, 2007Have you heard of Market Motive yet? Read More >> |
| June 6, 2007Forum member “ARothman” is looking for suggestions on how to determine which website leads actually become sales. Read More >> |
| May 30, 2007Randy (and some others) have some great advice on how women and men view the
Web differently. You don't want to miss this thread! Read More >> |
| April 17, 2007In Part 1 of this series, we discovered that explaining the value your
products offer is only one part of the copywriting process. Creating a
visual image is another. While Wholesalers USA knew their target customers
better than most companies do, they needed help with two areas: optimizing
their copy for the search engines and incorporating visual imagery. Read More >>
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| April 3, 2007There’s no doubt. Wholesalers USA knows their customers. They’ve spent the
time digging through log files to analyze site stats. They’ve spoken with
customers on the phone and emailed with them. They’ve used client feedback
to develop new products that have taken off like a rocket. Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007My SEO’s Good. Now Should I Work On Conversions? Read More >> |
| February 14, 2007I found out quite by chance. I noticed a research brief in my inbox
entitled, “Bad Web Experience Impacts Brick and Mortar Shopping.” Being
primarily focused on Internet business, I really didn’t pay it much
attention. But then I noticed it made reference to a customer’s online
experience, too, so I read on. Read More >> |
| November 29, 2006Karon's back today to show us the results from the Julie's Jewels
copywriting makeover that she wrote about last time. Read More >> |
| October 25, 2006Sixty-year-old newbie here with his first e-book! My site is unlinked -- just "up there." I teach project management for a living -- but ill health is forcing early retirement, and I have an urgent need to keep paying the mortgage! Read More >> |
| October 25, 2006It's one of the best pieces of copywriting advice I've ever been given. "As
often as possible, start your paragraphs with sentences that hook readers
and drive them deeper into the copy." Read More >> |
| October 11, 2006The length of search phrases continues to grow. Back when the Internet was
just an upstart, single keywords were the only thing you needed. But in
recent years we've seen the number of words used in search phrases triple
and quadruple. Read More >> |
| August 30, 2006Here’s Karon’s latest and greatest article on…well…writing articles! Read More >> |
| August 16, 2006I hope you enjoy this brand-new article from Karon...it's hot off the
presses! - Jill
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