Archive for October, 2006
Songs for Meetings
Last year, I blogged about a colleague who said you could never go wrong with picking a current Country Music Album title as the theme for your corporate meeting. Well, I think this year’s nominees for the 40th annual CMA Awards (Country Music Association) may very well prove him wrong. Here are the nominees for […]
The Attractor Factor of Banner Ads
Typically, I do not recommend banner ad buys. Banner ads have a low clickthrough rate for three reasons:
One reason: Placement. Unless you are very careful about placement, many banner ad campaigns can be out of context — for example, if your audience is researching online presentation software, and your banner ad is about lace and taffeta dresses […]
About DMOZ…
Many clients ask me about DMOZ. Generally, the question(s) are this:
“I’ve submitted there over a year ago — why am I not listed yet? Everyone says I need to be in DMOZ to get good Search Engine Ranking — is that true? Is there anything I can do to get listed?”
Here is my answer:
DMOZ.org is the open […]
Focus on Google.
“Why focus so much on Google?” you may ask. “There are other search engines out there. Why not focus on them?”
Here is why:
Google has over 49% of all search engine traffic. To see the spread on the other engines, see the report and graphs SearchEngineWatch.com .
If you are considering search engine marketing as part of […]
When canonicalization chooses you…
Sometimes, you don’t get to choose your canonical. Your canonicalization chooses you.
Witness the client who developed an OSCommerce site. He wanted a canonical of www.
But the OSCommerce back-end is set to no-www. My client shrugged and said, “Eh, what the heck. Make it no-www then. No harm done.”
Good choice. The site hadn’t been launched yet, […]
Canonicalization and Search Engine Marketing
With regard to Search Engine Marketing, I used the word “Canonicalization” yesterday.
Twice. I almost choked on the word as I stuttered through pronouncing it.
My clients regarded me strangely. I wish there was a better word or phrase. If you know of one, let me know.
Basically, what I mean by Canonicalization is this:
Do you want to […]
How to test your landing pages
I just took a time out with a cup of Joe to watch an extremely exciting demo of a new free product from Google called WebOptimizer.
Why is it exciting? Because it lets you test how well your website’s landing pages are performing, so that you can make simple tweaks to your pages that can dramatically […]
Why should I follow your command?
Call now. Click here. Buy today.
These are three common “calls to action” that you frequently see on e-commerce websites. And each call to action is direct and to-the-point. But what else can an ecommerce direct copy writer do to persuade web visitors follow these commands?
Give your visitors a reason why they should follow your command. […]
You don’t want to be first…
…at Google Adwords.
You want to be second, third, or fourth. Here’s why:
You may get more traffic with a number one position, but that doesn’t mean that you will get more sales.
People who are looking to buy often perform comparison shopping when they enter product names into the search engines. That means they will likely click […]
Blog pitches, part II
Regarding yesterday’s post on “how to pitch blog writers”….
Here is a cut, copy, and paste directly from my email box:
Dear Laura Bergells,
I wanted to interest you in A new software that has relation
to the Presentation and Powerpoint Realm. I would appreciate any
cooperation you willing to accept.
In princible, what I had in mind is the possibility […]
