Rand McCarley, of 14th Colony Scout, lists his 13 reasons web sites fail, following up on Todd Malicoat’s You Wear a Suit to Work, but let Your Nephew Design Your Website?. Both posts are getting at the same important point: professionalism is a critical part of web site development. Your website is no less a reflection of your business than your physical location is or than your are yourself in a business meeting, and the design and detail of your […]
Continue reading “Building a Professional Website” »Category: Search Marketing
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour A Day (Book Review)
by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin Purchase from Amazon (affiliate link) SEO: An Hour a Day This book, an excellent guide for the self-motivated search engine optimizer, won me over on page 54. Not that I wasn’t already convinced that Jennifer and Gradiva had a lot to say: but page 54 contained the single statement which demonstrated a perfect understanding of what it takes to understand the search marketing industry. I wonder why that’s happening. As they say, this mantra […]
Continue reading “Search Engine Optimization: An Hour A Day (Book Review)” »Listening for Relevant Noise
One interesting way of looking out for interesting projects or ideas on the net is to simply take a peek at your log files every once in a while. Today, while poking through the very large list of "unknown" user agents that AWStats spat at me, I ran across something from http://relevantnoise.com/. relevantNoise is in the old-fashioned field of reputation management. Specifically, they’re dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence. They’ll monitor what’s being said about your company (and about […]
Continue reading “Listening for Relevant Noise” »The Importance of Product Images
Images are a critical part of almost any website. Having a well-communicated brand identity can make a huge difference in convincing visitors to return – and having high quality product images can be the difference between a sale and an exit page. I’ve had too many cases where, in an otherwise beautiful design, I’ve had to work with clumsy, out of focus, poorly optimized images. All the copy in the world may not help you if you’ve got low quality […]
Continue reading “The Importance of Product Images” »How Do You Search?
One question it can be useful to ask yourself when beginning an SEO study is how, exactly, you would go about finding the product you’re trying to emphasize. It’s not enough to simply brainstorm synonyms or chain together descriptive terms: you need to think like an amateur. The vast majority of customers for any web site are amateurs. Amateurs buying ski gear, amateurs buying computer equipment, amateurs looking for medical information. They aren’t likely to be professional researchers, either. So […]
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