• Search And The Moral Imperative
    Large corporations continue to compile ever-larger databases of our personal information. China's irresistible economic pull causes organizations and governments to tactfully overlook moral objections. Facebook tells my friends if I buy a pair of shoes or a porn video [though the company just announced it is changing that policy to opt-in rather than opt-out].When it comes to search, do organizations have any moral obligations? And, if so, what are they?
  • Passing The Tactical Torch To The New Kids
    There's been a generational transition in search. The new generation is taking over the tactical stuff. These are hotshots that live and breathe social media optimization, get a visceral rush out of an elegant link baiting campaign and measure their prowess through the number of Diggs they collect. They've taken organic optimization to a new level....
  • Is Your URL Hot Or Not?
    I have become obsessed -- some (namely, my wife) might say possessed -- by URLs. I can't watch TV, drive down the highway, or look at search results without fixating on URLs. And I certainly can't let a URL go by without comment. As for what brought on this case of URL-itis, I'm pretty sure it has to do with my day job in search marketing.
  • Manufacturers Face Unique Search Marketing Challenges
    Some companies, such as manufacturers, face a unique set of search marketing challenges. Some manufacturers routinely sell tens or hundreds of thousands of technical parts or products -- with individual SKUs for every part. These companies often place high level ads to create some brand awareness and drive some traffic. However when it comes to taking advantage of their prospects' online habits and measuring results from their on-line ad spend, these companies face a complex problem needing skilled resources and out-of-the-box thinking to measure conversion.
  • Trends, Illusions, And Pain Points: Looking Back At 2007 (And Forward To 2008)
    n the next month or so, you're going to be reading a lot of ink written by online pundits predicting what the big trend of 2008 will be. To provide some pre-forecast inoculation against this annual tea-reading ritual, let's look at what they said a year ago about 2007.
  • More Traffic For Less Money -- How To Get The Most From Content Campaigns
    As paid marketing becomes more expensive, advertisers search for additional exposure at lower prices. Content networks can prove to be very effective tools for bringing lower cost clicks to higher priced or less searched keywords if optimized properly, but many companies don't create campaigns specifically for content. Simply allowing the same broad matched terms and advertisements created for a search network to run in content networks could result in hundreds of superfluous clicks and a poor ROI. It is important to understand how campaigns must be created in order to bring in high-quality content network clicks.
  • 'Search-Engine-Friendly' Copywriting Style Is Often Not Very Friendly To Humans
    If there is one black mark that some search-engine-friendly copywriters will have left on the early years of digital marketing and advertising history, it will be for how they managed to butcher various language structures throughout the world with their new brand of "search engine friendly copywriting" style.
  • What Facebook Learned from Search
    Imagine if Picasso painted a search engine results page from Google. It would probably wind up looking like Facebook, which continually draws inspiration from search engines as it rolls out its services for marketers.
  • Looking for Data in All The Wrong Places
    Everybody wants to know where the online ad industry (and the search ecosystem that drives it) is going. The problem is that everybody's looking in the wrong places for the answer to this question.
  • Search And Online Advertising: A Continual Evolution
    Online advertising has evolved significantly since Yahoo placed the first display ad on its home page as a test to see how users would react. Back then, no one was really sure online advertising could be a business model. But users responded, and Yahoo went public in 1996, the same year that the Internet Advertising Bureau was formed. In a short 10 years, the IAB reported that Internet ad revenues neared $17 billion in 2006.
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