Mike is an expert in search marketing, search technology, publishing, Web personalization, and Web metrics, who regularly makes speaking appearances.
Mike's previous appearances include Search Engine Strategies, AD:TECH, Consumer Reports WebWatch, OMMA East, and the Enterprise Search Summit.
Mike also writes the Biznology newsletter and blog, is the co-author of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., and writes the search marketing column for Revenue Magazine.
Most people are familiar with the term "division of labor," which describes the specialization that companies adopt to promote efficiency. The assembly line is one of the best examples of the efficiency gains that division of labor provides. In a tiny company, such as a one-person firm, there is no division of labor, but as soon as you start to grow, even a little bit, you start dicing up jobs in the name of efficiency. The problem, from a marketing point of view, is that efficient doesn't equal effective. Division of labor can harm your marketing effectiveness and you must...
I sat on a panel at SUPERCOMM's Digital Media Forum in Chicago on Friday called, "Redefining Social Media." (Eric Forst of Visible Technologies and Edward Moran of Deloitte & Touche spoke with me, ably moderated by Patty Brown of The Content Strategy Group.) The name of the panel initially threw me, because it feels like anything old enough to be redefined seems a bit passé, which social media most decidedly is not. But I think there is a point to be made about social media and how it is maturing....
I'm often asked by small business owners (and folks in larger businesses, too) how they can keep up with all the new things going on in social media, search, and everything else on the Internet. It's hard for them to hear sometimes, but I keep trying to tell them that is the wrong question. What they need to do instead is to simply decide what to ignore....
I speak to many small businesses working on organic search marketing. They usually understand the concept of keyword research, but often they miss a basic step that makes the difference between a successful search program and one that just bumps along without creating much of an impact....
Large companies are very concerned about their reputations, their brand images, the "word on the street," and ten other hackneyed phrases that all add up to the same thing: they are listening to what people say about them. But when I talk to small businesses, I often find that they don't pay as much attention. If you work in a small business, I want you to know that attitude is a mistake....
Sometimes I can tell just by the way they sidle up to me at a conference. They look around to make sure no one is watching, and then they half-whisper to me out of the side of their mouths, "Just between you and me, what is the trick to search marketing?"...
For the past couple of years, people have been asking if blogging is now dead. Now, as you read this blog post, you might expect that if I took the time to write it, I probably don't agree. And I don't. But the "blogging is dead: crowd does have a point—I just don't think the situation is as extreme as they say....
Good Internet marketers pay close attention to conversion rates, checking their Web analytics system to see how many folks came to the site and how many actually bought something. Some interesting research from Sun Microsystems shad some new light on the limits to how easily we can calculate certain types of conversions....
"Best practices" is one of those dry as dust phrases that conjures up a consultant orating at you and a dozen co-workers sitting in uncomfortable chairs, each one wishing you could go back to work. If you missed Adam Audette's interesting article entitled, "SEO 'Best Practices' Are Bunk," you should pull up a chair and follow the link to read it. (I'll wait right here.) Adam alluded to my Do It Wrong Quickly concept as a way to do things right (if that isn't an oxymoron in itself), and on the whole I think he is on the right track....
Analysts keep bringing it up. Reporters do, too. How much money is Google losing on YouTube? And can they afford it? The lingering question that affects Internet marketers the most is what happens if Google decides they can't afford it. If you are using YouTube for marketing, should you be worried?...
Recently, a commenter on this blog asked a question that I often hear, "What do you say to corporate people worried about security risks of social media within a company?" It's one of my favorite questions, because it really exposes the way we look at risk, which is all-too-human and, simultaneously, dumb....
Google has arguably been a big company for many years now, but it did better than most not to act like one. Big companies run by the whims of its shareholders and creditors, but Sergey and Larry have taken pains to run the company their way and have precious little debt. Big companies suffer from top-down planning, but Google allows employees to spend 20% of their time on personally-selected projects. Big companies begin hiring mediocre employees as they rapidly expand, but the founders have made a personal focus on high standards pay off. But I see a tell-tale sign of...
I talk to lots of companies that are afraid to allow their employees to participate in social media. I also talk a lot of companies successfully using social media. What do the successful companies know? It costs nothing and you can do it, too. It has to do with how you treat your employees....
Everyone is staring hard at Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, and I mostly like what I see, with one exception. I've written before about the search engine conflict of interest between highlighting their own properties and providing the truly best answer. In the quest for ever more cash, search engines are presenting results that point to their own pages. What does that mean to the searcher and to the search marketer?...
I post something on my Biznology blog each day I'm working, and we've got a lot of subscribers so we get a fair number of comments. And I check each and every comment before it is posted, so that I'm not littering the blog with spam comments. But I am finding myself challenged by deciding just what is and is not spam. If you run a blog, I wonder if this has ever happened to you, too....
I'm a consultant, and for consultants, nothing beats being proactive, huh? You want to be ahead of the curve, up on the latest, and [insert your favorite cliché here]. But social media is so new, and it changes so fast, that it's really painful to be proactive. It's enormously time consuming to have spent so much time in social media that you are ahead of the curve. You'd have no time for your real business. I am advising you to shoot a lot lower. When it comes to social media, aspire to be reactive....
I promised this week that I'd stop beating the dead horse of how many keywords to target per page, and I will keep that promise. But the divergence of opinion and the deeply-held beliefs that some of us have on this issue made me realize that I violated one of my own rules with this whole discussion. I gave you my opinion about something and then argued with people when their opinions differed. I didn't take the advice that I so routinely dispense: "Data beats opinions in any decision." Yes, that includes my opinion, too....
I promise to let go of this one after this week, but there have been so many upset people that I feel the need to revisit this subject once again. There have been many comments about my original post that you should primarily target one keyword per page. I followed that up with some explanation of why. But one commenter called the advice "utter nonsense" (which is even worse that that regular nonsense I usually spew), so I think I'd like to give the explanation one more try, in hopes that perhaps we can at least live with each other...
Last week in this space, I urged organic search marketers to focus on optimizing for one keyword per page, rather than taking a scattershot approach where they are trying to shoehorn many keywords into the same landing page. I knew that it wasn't the normal advice that people hear, but I wasn't prepared for how many comments and questions I got, so I thought it was worth revisiting the topic this week. If you're still unpersuaded about the approach of targeting one keyword per page, I want to take another shot at it....
I'm sometimes asked this question, usually by someone savvy in search marketing. After all, it's expensive to create and optimize pages for search, so you'd want to amortize that investment over as many keywords as possible right? Actually, no. The number of organic search keywords I recommend you target per page is one....
Most companies I work with market only to smart people. I mean what do you have against us dunces anyway? I know you'll deny it, but if I look at your Web site, I bet you're as guilty as the rest. If you don't believe me, read on....
With so many people deciding to start blogging, one of the first questions they ask is, "Where should it go?" I get that question all the time, but especially from those savvy in organic search marketing, because they are concerned about the links coming into the blog counting in their column for improved search rankings. Should they be?...
A couple of years ago, I wrote about the "Search Engine Tug of War" between merchants and affiliates, and the basics haven't changed much since I wrote that article. But more and more companies running affiliate marketing programs are changing their policies on paid search. Recently, the granddaddy of all affiliate marketing programs, Amazon Associates, announced that they are curtailing some of their practices on paid search....
As someone who has helped search marketers build up their in-house search resources for years, you might think that there are never any reasons that I'd recommend using an agency. But you'd be wrong. There are always situations that require a different approach, and in most cases the right answer is a hybrid approach to search. Read on for why you might not want to do everything in house....
A client asked me this very question recently and it got me to thinking about what's wrong with the way a lot of us think about search marketing. The major concept behind successful search marketing (and indeed all of Internet marketing) is direct marketing. And the more you know about direct marketing, the less this question makes sense....
I've often been asked why particular pages are not indexed. Honestly, you can never be sure until you fix the problem. If you think that you've isolated the problem, you never know if you've only corrected one of multiple problems. So, it's best to take it step-by-step....
I constantly counsel people to make their Web site more than just an online brochure—they must measure their conversions online and offline so they know what it's worth to bring that extra visitor to their Web site. Only then do you know what to spend on marketing. Simple, right? Not always. What do you do when you have multiple ways of measuring conversions?...
I am frequently asked how to find search terms in a specialized industry—the other day I was asked specifically about the Biotech and the Medical Device industries. I think part of the reason this question comes up is that we search experts always use popular examples, such as "digital cameras," to demonstrate keyword research. But what if you sell apnea monitors? Surely a product that specialized needs a different approach, right?...
Many marketers are asking me about personalized marketing, which you should expect to see more and more of in the next few years. We've already seen behavioral targeting in display ads and personalized search, and we'll see more personalized advertising emerge. But are we marketers just assuming that users will allow all this personalized marketing in? What if they clean their cookies regularly? Will that prevent those users from being exposed to personalized ads?...
The owner of a Web site that sells ski and snowboard equipment contacted me recently with a burning question, "How do I get links to my Web site?" His e-mail was filled with lots of geeky search jargon about reciprocal links and PageRank effects--enough that I suspected I wasn't dealing with someone clueless about search marketing. Instead, I think this business owner had done a lot of research on search marketing and was asking me about what he'd been told. He was gearing up for a big link campaign, targeting ski resorts and any other place he could find. I...
Should you care about what kind of marketing is hot? I got a question recently from a small business owner on how important readable URLs are for a Web site. The reason he was asking is that his technical adviser told him that "SEO just isn't that important anymore." Is he right? Well, you probably wouldn't expect me to agree with that point of view, and I don't, but there is some truth in the idea that search engine optimization is not the be-all end-all of Internet success that it was a few years ago. And the question of readable...
I got an e-mail recently from someone very concerned that his product catalog does not have links to every page on his site from his sitemap, although he has a complete link structure emanating from his home page. Should he beat his programmer about the face and body until he creates a proper sitemap?...
I often talk to small business people who lament at how the marketing deck is stacked against them. The big guys have the connections, the money, and the brand name. "How can I compete," I hear them asking. I always have the same answer--Internet marketing, especially organic search marketing. But when I tell them this, often I get disbelief. These small business owners have painfully learned over the years that marketing is for big companies, not for them. They're wrong....
Someone recently asked me how he knows whether to use shopping cart software or a full-blown content management system for a Web site. Does it depend on how large your site is? Does it depend on what kind of content you have? And, most importantly, which one is better for search marketing? These are good questions, so they deserve good answers....
You're constantly getting advice, from me and all the Internet marketing gurus, that you need great content to succeed in search marketing (and lots of other Internet marketing techniques, too). And we all assume that you'll write this wonderful content yourself, because, God bless us, if you can write e-mail you can probably write a blog post or a Web article. But, if you're like me, you really want to include a picture. And if you're really like me, you couldn't take a decent picture if your life depended on it. And if you're a carbon copy of me, you...
As we hear optimists tell us not to worry, it won't be as bad as the Great Depression, it seems clear that we're looking at very difficult economic times worldwide. And, as veteran marketers know, any economic downturn means lower advertising expenditures. And so, Google announced a huge gain (what?!) in revenue last week. What's going on here?...
Those of you who know me realize that I am a big fan of feedback. The very title of my book Do It Wrong Quickly is a snarky way of saying that most of what we do is wrong, and that only by looking for feedback from customers can we realize what is wrong and what actually worked. So, I should be very excited about the announcement today of Yahoo!'s new analytics tool. And mostly, I am. But I am also starting to wonder when fast gets fast enough....
Ever see a billboard on the side of a bus for a new movie? "Wow" or "Amazing" is a typical quote. But you've heard the occasional story that the full reviewer's quote was actually "Wow, this is the worst musical I've seen in 20 years." or "It's amazing that a studio even released this movie." The people reading our marketing claims often treat them like detective stories, trying to figure out what's really going behind the florid prose. Does that sound like your company?...
I'm constantly amazed by the folks in direct mail who send out these long letters asking me to sign up for one more credit card—I know they work, but it's not my style (and it doesn't work well on the Web). I am often reminded of a story from my youth—the 1960s—when a long-haired hippy was struggling to get a ride to his destination. The hitchhiker kept sticking out his thumb, but no one stopped. Finally, he scrawled on a piece of cardboard, "Going to the Barber" and he was picked up within minutes. Now, that's copywriting....
Several people wrote to me asking me to review Cuil, the hot new search engine that everyone is talking about. Except me. I've explained in the past that I am not expecting any new search engine to come along to dethrone Google. But people persisted, "This one is really different!" So I looked and I listened and I read, and I'm sorry folks, but I don't know what all the fuss is about....
Frank Reed had an interesting post on his Frank Thinking blog, lamenting how small businesses seem to avoid search marketing. They spend their money on Yellow Pages ads and other older forms of marketing that might not bring the best return on their investment. So, with the U.S. economy focusing every small business on making more from less, why is it that Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular is so scary? What can we do to help small businesses take advantage of the Internet?...
You've probably heard me advise marketers to "do it wrong quickly," allowing feedback from customers to help you improve your marketing. I am using feedback from my June 24th post on "Free Ways to Estimate Keyword Demand" (and a fortuitous announcement by Google) to improve the procedure I documented just a few weeks ago. (In case you're wondering, "keyword demand" is the number of searches on a particular search keyword done in a period of time, such as "3,000 U.S. searches per month for the keyword AAA Plumbing"—which you can use to help project the traffic you'll attract to your...
We all want to be in control, but search marketing is a roller coaster ride, where you really need to let go for it to be a worthwhile experience. If you've always had trouble letting go of control, perhaps that's what preventing you from really succeeding at search marketing....
Is search marketing old enough to have a good old days? If it is, then I remember them. Ah, the days when you could fire up the Overture keyword tool to see how many searches were done in the U.S. on Yahoo! for a particular keyword. Add a little math, and you could estimate the number of searches done across all U.S. search engines in a month. But then Yahoo! crippled that free tool, and we've been left with no way to project keyword demand, until now....
My sixteen-year-old son posed a riddle for me the other day: "How does a white beard work?" When I gave up, he revealed the answer: "A hobo." (Should I have mentioned that my son has Down Syndrome?) Anyway, if that riddle made sense to you, then you probably love to analyze the inscrutable world of search metrics....
I'm old, so I have seen many different battlegrounds come and go in search marketing. Keywords, Links, Content. Multi-media is the one raging now. But which one is next? It could be personalization. It could be mobile. It could also be design....
I read a recent interview with marketing guru Guy Kawasaki by Lee Odden, where he said he didn't know anything about search marketing except to "write good stuff." It sounded almost apologetic, but you should know that producing content that people want to spend time with is, in fact, the most important part of search marketing. And small businesses will be happy to know that it doesn't cost much more for lousy content than it does for good stuff—although it does take more talent and more time. So, what is a small business to do about creating good content? My...
At Search Engine Strategies in March, Tim Ash walked up to me after my speech and handed me his book. I (ashamed to say) did not know Tim and had not heard of his book before then. I leafed through it quickly and told myself, "This looks good," and promptly dumped it in my pile of books that take forever to get read. I told myself I'd eventually read it, but it took me quite a while to do so. That was a big mistake....
Mike is an expert in search marketing, search technology, publishing, Web personalization, and Web metrics, who regularly makes speaking appearances.
Mike's previous appearances include Search Engine Strategies, AD:TECH, Consumer Reports WebWatch, OMMA East, and the Enterprise Search Summit.
Mike also writes the Biznology newsletter and blog, is the co-author of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., and writes the search marketing column for Revenue Magazine.
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