Search Engine Marketing
« Previous EntriesAm I The Only Person on the Planet Who Knows that In-House SEM Teams Are a Disaster?
Monday, June 23rd, 2008I’m used to getting flak from people in the online ad industry with certain vested interests. You should have heard the howls when I noted back in 2006 that “SEO Isn’t Rocket Science,” and that companies paying SEO spammers $500 an hour to fix their web sites were saps. Now it seems my latest article, […]
Apocalypse Yahoo?
Friday, April 25th, 2008I spent some time this week watching Apocalypse Now (Redux), one of my all-time favorite films from the 1970s. I’ve seen this film at least 10 times, and it always has some new lesson to teach me about the state of the world, and this time around, a few scenes reminded me of Yahoo’s current […]
Loyalty is Dead; Long Live Marketplace Amorality
Thursday, April 17th, 2008Loyalty, it’s said, is dead. Already buried is the traditional loyalty which corporations used to display towards those working for them and the reciprocal loyalty of workers toward these organizations. Loyalty towards brands is an illusion, especially in a recession, when consumers figure out that they can get the same value from a non-branded good […]
Breaking News: Search Marketing Techniques Devised in 1930’s
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Excellent article by Alan Rimm-Kaufman on the fact that today’s search marketing best practices are inherited directly from traditional Direct Mail techniques devised 80 years ago. Especially relevant is the “List-Offer-Package Rule” holding that Lists (the segment you’re marketing to) are the most important variable, followed by Offer, and then Package (i.e messaging). This basic […]
American Express Slams SEO, SE Spammers React With More Whining
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008One of the most annoying things about the SEO crowd is how thin-skinned they are. They might come off all rough and tough on their Blogs, but this hard shell masks a quivering level of insecurity that’s clearly rooted in their own precarious and highly temporary status in the search economy.
All it took was […]
Toxic Buzzword of the Week: ORM (Online Reputation Management)
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008I don’t have any real quarrel with the article that John Carcutt wrote for SearchEngineJournal.com this week, because he does us all a service by pointing out that most SEOs are, for a variety of reasons, completely unqualified to handle online reputation management. Not only do they not have the proper skillsets, but as he […]
The SEM Agency Crisis Won’t Be Solved Over Coffee and Crumb Cakes
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008This week, DMNews’ Sara Holoubek wrote an article entitled “SEMs are from Mars, clients are from Venus” which alludes to the fact that clients and SEM agencies very seldom have good long term relationships.
In my view, however, Ms. Holoubek’s evident belief that a solution lies in the application of “mutual respect, professionalism, intellectual curiosity […]
Ridiculous Statement of the Week: Jill Whelan on SEOs Committing Crimes Against Clients
Thursday, March 27th, 2008SearchEngineLand.com’s Jill Whelan won our “Ridiculous Statement of the Week” award when she wrote the following absurd nugget in a rambling defense of the SEM industry’s complete failure to propose and implement meaningful codes of conduct for SEOers:
“One would think the threat of jail time or a court-ordered breach of contract settlement would be deterrent […]
Amazing Marketing News: SEO Isn’t Quite Dead (Yet)!
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008I made the mistake of opening my e-mail this morning to read an article by Sarah Holoubek entitled “The Return of SEO.” While it wasn’t the worst example of pro-SEO boosterism that I’ve seen, it contained enough misunderstandings about the objective health of the SEO industry to warrant a response.
Ms. Houlebek (quoting the SEMPO 2007 […]
Search Within Search: More Costs For Those Paying Google’s Bills
Monday, March 24th, 2008The New York Times’ Saul Hansell wrote a good article on Google’s “Search Within Search,” a new (and largely unwelcome) feature which invites users to inspect information on Google SERPs instead of burrowing into the target site itself. The result is that users will spend more time on Google and at the same time be […]
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