• Search in A World Of Converged Media
    I spent a good amount of time over the weekend poring over Altimeter Group's recent report, "The Converged Media Imperative." The research is highly recommended reading if you haven't yet downloaded it yourself. Authors Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang unpack their findings over 26 slides, identifying throughout the requirement to connect with audiences through a combination of paid, earned, and owned media.
  • What Do A BLT And Search Marketing Have In Common?
    An oft-quoted line is "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This is just as true for digital marketing and search as it is for the lowly BLT. Marketers who understand the interdependence between digital channels (paid search, organic search, display, social, etc.) can optimize their efforts based on holistic data instead of siloed sets of data. By looking at the whole picture, marketers can benefit from more scalable, sustainable and profitable results.
  • Marissa Mayer And Yahoo's Regression To The Mean
    There is not a lot of overlap between the universes of Gord Hotchkiss and Marissa Mayer, but our orbits have intersected on a few occasions in the past. I've had the opportunity to talk to Mayer about various aspects of search on a handful of occasions, so it was with some interest that I watched the announcement and subsequent buzz about her appointment as Yahoo CEO.
  • More Unsolicited Advice For Marissa Mayer
    In the week that's passed since Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo, it seems like she's been getting unsolicited advice from everyone and their mother -- including advice on how to be a mother! Back in 2008, I wrote a column outlining 10 things I'd do if I were running Yahoo. As it turns out, four of my wish list items came to be -- but the company's no better off than when I wrote them, so I guess that means I wasn't qualified to be Yahoo CEO.
  • The First Rule Of SEO: Don't Panic!
    Over the past week, Google was at it again, challenging the sanity and stress levels of SEOs everywhere. Last week, many Webmasters received a message in Google Webmaster Tools that seemed to threaten site removal from the Google index.
  • Turbo-Charging Thought Leadership Efforts With Google Authorship Markup
    I have a theory. I believe that any company, across any industry vertical, can take advantage of the early-mover opportunity that Google's Authorship markup protocol provides. This opportunity would allow organizations to position themselves as THE forward-thinkers of their category, with both Google results and social sentiment closely following. How exactly can organizations accomplish this? By instructing content to be built by the company's leading thinkers. Let me explain.
  • Bet Big On Digital Acceleration
    As potential customers, we expect companies to have their digital acts together. More than this, it appears we're ready to reward companies that aggressively invest in raising the bar of their own connected maturity level. Why, then, are companies so loath to place significant bets on their own digital future? I deal with big companies all the time, and when it comes to investing in their own websites, online marketing, web support platforms and other planks in their digital platform, they seem to prefer hedging their bets, squeezing out miserly budgets at a level that would make Ebenezer Scrooge seem …
  • Marissa Mayer Hire Gives Yahoo Much-Needed Lift
    Yesterday may have been Yahoo's best day in the last five years. Marissa Mayer will be CEO, and Yahoo couldn't have found a better person to guide it.
  • Three Lessons Learned From Digg's Burial
    I don't know if "shocking" is the right word. Improbable. Unexpected. Sad. Indescribable. Last Thursday Digg announced it had been sold to Betaworks for a reported measly $500,000. The social news site that was one of the early darlings of the online social media movement will now be folded into a revamped Betaworks offering, News.me. Digg's rise, and subsequent fall, offers a sobering look into the fickleness of the modern Web consumer. Through the constant stream of innovation, the status quo is always being challenged. Search marketers should take notice of the lessons Digg's demise offers.
  • A Cyclist's Farewell
    This past Sunday, I spent the day riding a bike 100 miles through searing 95-degree heat in Canada's only desert. Bet you didn't even realize Canada has a desert, did you? Well, we do. Trust me. And it's freaking hot. After about 60 miles, I was ready to pack it in and grab a beer. But I gutted it out for another 40 miles, because that's what cycling is about: gutting it out. I give you this preamble because last week, the world of search marketing lost a very gutsy guy who also happened to be a cyclist.
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