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Thu Dec 27, 2007

Now's your chance. Google has announced plans to run search ads on Google Mobile Search pages. In fact, they also announced they'll be letting advertisers test drive the program for free over the next couple of months. Sounds like a good reason to get...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Not long ago my wife and I left the house for a nice dinner out. We are typically early eaters so we'll leave around 4:30 in order to avoid any the dinner rush and long waits to be seated. This time we didn't. As we pulled up to our (read: her) favorite...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Yesterday, I wrote about my frustration with Google's crusade against paid links. While I pointed out some of the problems I see with Google's plans, I didn't go into near as much detail as I would have liked to. Thankfully, Dan Thies also put together an...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

The team at Yahoo! announced yesterday that they've taken steps to make it even easier for small businesses to authenticate their site and setup full access with Yahoo!'s Site Explorer. Yahoo! Small Business just made it easier for customers to submit...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

One of the first bits of advice I give to those who are new to search engine optimization is to stop trying to rank for highly competitive phrases and to focus on the long tail of search. Hamlet Batista disagrees. In fact, he wrote a post...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

I bought a book from Barnes and Noble once. Just once. That was a few years back and ever since I've been receiving their weekly emails telling me about books that are being released and other such stuff that I'm not interested in. I usually just delete...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Well I am at Search Engine Strategies San Jose; the weather is beautiful, the company great and the discussions so far excellent. The following are point form notes from an interesting seminar that discussed how search can be used to aid in branding...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

What if you had the ability to launch a smarter email campaign which allowed you to determine the level of your subscribers' engagement down to individual conversions? This is essentially what ClickTracks and Lyris have done by integrating Lyris' email...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

A long time ago in an office far away, I spent weeks and weeks optimizing nearly 2000 PDF files for the company where I worked. That was more than five years ago and I'm surprised to hear how many small business owners have no idea that you can optimize a...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

With so many companies trying to figure out how to leverage social media and blogs to their marketing advantage, one key point often gets missed. "Just talk to them!" If more companies would spend half the time reading blog posts and responding to them...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Earlier this week in my article about aiming for less competitive phrases in the early days of your SEO attempts, I mentioned the fact that most searchers conduct several queries and visit several sites before making a purchase. This action mimics offline...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Blockbuster provides a perfect real-world example of a company struggling to get it right. Sometimes they get the DVD in the tray and sometimes they don't. (That analogy sounded better in my head!) One of the neat features of Blockbuster Total Access...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Ok, so she's not "our" Diane Aull as much as she's Acroprint and Nine Yards' Diane Aull, but she is a regular writer and forum moderator here. Liana Evans has an entertaining (and information packed) interview with Diane over at Search Marketing Gurus...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Aaron over at AjaxNinja has a great post this week exploring why niche social media sites are better than Digg when it comes to driving traffic and conversions to most web sites. While I've never been much of a Digg fan myself, (it's like news for the...

Thu Dec 27, 2007

Companies have been rushing to embrace social media in droves over the last year. While it's great to see companies embracing Web 2.0, I worry sometimes about the number of companies rushing in to talk rather than listen. After all, one of the greatest...