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My initial reaction to SEOmoz’s The Professional’s Guide to Keyword Research was one of disappointment. I guess I was expecting something more strategic, along the lines of our own Keyword Research and Selection link. But the more I continued reading through the pages of SEOmoz’sKeyword Guide, the more I appreciated the detail and thoroughness of […]

While being educated in the area of business marketing, I constantly had to develop unique value propositions (UVP) for imaginary companies. The idea was something that has stuck with me through the years. As I continue working with many different types of clients, I’m finding that one’s UVP is becoming more and more […]

10 Cool Things You Can Do With (the New) Google Analytics - Hat tip to Lisa Barone.

Google recently added “Experimental Search” to their labs. I’ve outlined some of the cool stuff over at Search Engine Guide.
Experiment away!

I’ve lost my mojo. Please help me find it.
My writing professor used to always tell us not to wait for inspiration to start writing. Sometimes that’s hard, especially when your words are in the public domain. It’s not like this blog gets filed away in a binder somewhere. Whenever we hit that “publish” button our […]

Features are nice, but outlining benefits and end results make the sale. They explain why the customer will be better off after buying your product or using your service. The biggest selling factor in copywriting is showing the customer what they can do with a product or service.
Take a tip from the infamous infomercial!
They […]

It’s always nice to have a theme song. Today a link was sent to me via email for a MySpace account for (what I believe to be) a group called Hip Sauce. On the right is a link to the song, The Pole Position. I’m not a big country music fan, but I think I […]

Without understanding the full scope of Pay-Per-Click advertising, a small company owner will often attempt to manage their own PPC account. They write their ad, pick their keywords, set their max CPC, run the ad and walk away – content with their new paid exposure. What they don’t realize is that there is much more […]

The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Optimization
10 Reminders for Usability Web Design To Make Site Visitors Adore You
When Personas Fail

Google
April: 49.7%
March: 48.3%
Change: +1.4
January 2007: 47.5%
Change: +2.20
Yahoo
April: 26.8%
March: 27.5%
Change: -0.7
January 2007: 28.1%
Change: -1.3
MSN
April: 10.3%
March: 10.9%
Change: -0.6
January 2007: 10.6%
Change: -0.3
ASK
April: 5.1%
March: 5.2%
Change: -0.1
January 2007: 5.2%
Change: 0.0
AOL
April: 5.0%
March: 5.0%
Change: +0.0
January 2007: 5.0%
Change: +0.0
Source: comScore

Guerrilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business (Guerrilla Marketing)
Author: Jay Conrad Levinson
Paperback: 384 pages, $10.20
Originally Published: 1984
I started out really loving this book. And from there it just got more and more interesting. While this book is a few years old and some of the material is pretty dated, the concepts […]

David Wallace tagged me with a charity link meme that I’ve been sitting on for a week. This meme has probably come and gone but since its a holiday and I have some time on my hands I thought I’d get this up.
Here’s David’s list:

Phoenix Rescue Mission - homeless shelter Phoenix
Teen Challenge Arizona - help […]

Does your copy make your reader uncomfortable?
SEO copywriting is not just stuffing keywords into copy. Doing this only makes it unreadable. It’s copywriting first and SEO second. You need to know the voice of the website you are optimizing. You also need to know how to be persuasive, a pseudo-psychologist understanding human nature. Never forget […]

Information Architecture is the Most Underrated Component of Effective Search Marketing

Slimy Targeting
The topic of the day in my never-ending-quest to learn new stuff seems to be arbitrage. Since not everybody is an expert, I thought it would be helpful to post a definition of arbitrage. As defined by dictionary.com: “ar•bi•trage (är’bĭ-träzh’) n. The purchase of securities on one market for immediate resale on another […]

Trudging through what seems like an endless amounts of keywords can take an extreme amount of patience. As I’ve experienced my first few opportunities of researching keywords, I’ve noticed some similarities amongst typical search terms.

As Katie pointed out so eloquently in a previous blog, one of the first words I attempt to knock out […]

Websites have one purpose and that’s to sell, to move people to action, to make money. In today’s high-tech world, most copywriting found on websites neglects this vital fact and these sites don’t perform as good as they could.
Make Them Have to Pee
Build up excitement, enthusiasm, passion, and most importantly urgency. Get the reader […]

27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers - hat tip to the Grok

Google
April: 55.2%
January: 53.7%
Change: +1.5
Yahoo
April: 21.9%
January: 22.7%
Change: -0.8
MSN
April: 9.0%
January: 8.9%
Change: +0.1
AOL
April: 5.4%
January: 5.4%
Change: +0.0
ASK
April: 1.8%
January: 1.8%
Change: +0.0
Source: Nielsen//Netratings

Like many people, I’ve learned what I need to know to get the job done. Google AdWords is an example of this. In a prior job I was handed an AdWords account and I figured out how to use it. Either the Learning Center wasn’t around when I first used AdWords, or I just didn’t […]

The biggest travesty is when highly knowledgeable individuals are kind enough to share their inside know how, but fail to reach those who are truly interested by committing acts of grammaticide. That is the worst injustice anyone can do to themselves. On top of slaughtering a perfectly viable idea, they charge their readers a […]

Temporal Data & the Rankings Rollercoaster - Rand provides a nice addendum to my article yesterday at Search Engine Land
SEO Basics: “Click Here” is Evil
Search Engine Optimization Warfare - The Competitive Webmaster’s Guide to Understanding the Dynamics of Top Rankings

If I could only purchase one book on improving visitor conversions, The Conversion Expert’s Workbook would be that one (work)book. The good folks at FutureNow have essentially made their proprietary internal manual on the conversion process public. And anybody who purchases a copy for themselves will be better off for it!
The workbook is 248 standard […]