What is Local Optimization?
Brandon Clay | July 21, 2010
Before social media optimization (SMO) started taking over the world, local optimization (aka local SEO) was making headway.
Although not as sexy as social media, local optimization could be even more powerful for mom-and-pop businesses like doctors, pet stores, hair stylists, and any other business dependent on local customers.
Local optimization is concerned with two types of optimization: local search engine traffic & local non-search engine traffic. I’m primarily concerned with local search engine traffic for this post.
Click for more What is Local Optimization?The Sales Funnel in Pay Per Click Advertising
Brandon Clay | July 8, 2010
Read a few marketing books and take a few business classes and you’ll come across the sales funnel. The funnel is a foundational business principle. It’s not rocket science, but neither is it for first graders. It’s an old, essential concept and is still applicable today – especially in pay per click advertising (PPC).
For starters, let’s review the sales funnel. The concept is simple. Business development can be viewed as a funnel with a wide opening at top. The marketer’s job is to put as many leads into the funnel as possible. Leads go into the funnel and through a magical process of nurture and time you get sales from your efforts.
Click for more The Sales Funnel in Pay Per Click AdvertisingWhy Do You Go To Work?
Brandon Clay | June 29, 2010
What gets you up in the morning, drives you to a job, sits you at a computer…and makes you do it day after day. Is it a paycheck? Really?
Think about it? If money was not an issue, would you still go to work? Some of us would. Some of us may do something completely different. Whatever the answer, our motivation to work doesn’t always include financial reward.
Click for more Why Do You Go To Work?Rock Your Adwords Campaigns with Reports
Brandon Clay | June 14, 2010
The pay per click consultant is only as good as the reports they can pull and act upon. Without a steady diet of reports to devour, a PPC consultant’s campaigns languish, get sick – and worst of all – stop converting. Good reports are essential to healthy campaigns.
If you’re running PPC campaigns, get familiar with the Adwords Report Center. It’s not the only place to get actionable data for your campaigns, but it’s still the most important section for campaign optimization.
Click for more Rock Your Adwords Campaigns with ReportsThe Anatomy of a Good SEO Link
Brandon Clay | June 4, 2010
Links are the #1 ranking factor for search engines. Not saying that onsite ranking factors don’t matter. It’s just that links matter more.
You can thank Google for that. Google popularized the importance of links with their original PageRank algorithm. Back in 19-whatever, a couple of students holed-up in grad school decided most search engines weren’t good enough. They thought links were the better way to rank webpages in a search result.
Simply put, each link to a web page would vote for that page in a search result. The page with the most votes (read: links) wins.
Click for more The Anatomy of a Good SEO Link