Search Engine Marketing Blog
SEM & SEO: Ideas, Strategies, and News from the Will Marlow AgencyLet Yourself Be Found (Flip the Switch)
Proctor & Gamble, currently the world’s 8th largest corporation and over 170 years old, was the first company to put a toll-free 1-800 number on all of its product packaging. The first year after doing so, it received 200,000 phone calls from customers...
What’s the Problem with Newspapers?
What's the problem with newspapers? It's not complicated: Print revenue = shrinking. Print costs = constant. Online revenue = growing, but small, and online revenue isn't mature enough to replace the print revenue, yet. Right? Brand new paperless news organizations...
The Ideal Journalist
I was having a discussion with a journalist the other day about what combination of skills/traits are desirable in a journalist today.We came up with some interesting thoughts.According to us, the ideal journalist (without the support of a staff) should: 1. Be a great...
Usability Testing on a Shoestring
A lot of times we get really fancy when we need to do things like "usability testing." Someone I trust recently described a great way to do usability testing for your website for just $30.00. 1. Pick three of your friends who you don't work with. ...
Communicating in 2010
Many people focus on the content of their message. They refine and tweak and improve their message, and when they really nail it they may land an op-ed in the Washington Post, or their video may go viral, or some other great thing will happen to get them...
What is A/B Testing?
A reader pointed out that I referred to something in a called “A/B testing,” but I did not define it. Essentially, A/B testing is something you do when you are re-designing a web site or building new software, in order to find out if a new change...
Is It a Technology Problem or a Human Problem?
Some people look for technology to solve all their problems, and after they spend a lot of money, they realize that they have the same problems that they had before, and they get upset. Examples of this include: People who think oil and coal cause pollution, and...
How To Be Outstanding, Or What Happened When My Car Was Towed Last Night
Last night my car was towed from a restaurant's parking lot while I was eating dinner inside. The owner of the restaurant stopped preparing sushi to personally drive me and my party to the towing lot to retrieve the car. The owner could have handled this problem in...
What Do You Do When Your Traffic Dips?
A great question was emailed to me the other day from a reader who is a social media marketer who uses Google Analytics to measure aggregate traffic patterns, but also does useful A/B testing. He wanted to know what actions I would take if I saw a significant...
The Top Five Things to Come Out of the Last 10 Years
I've noticed a number of fairly negative commentaries summing up the decade that's ending on December 31st, which made me want to point out some of the great things that have happened over the last ten years. Wikipedia was founded in January 2001 (something that is...
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