Search Engine Marketing-General

Brace yourselves. With the current state of the economy, we are about to have the weakest holiday season in twenty years. According to Fitch Ratings, retail sales were negative in the “back to school” period for the first time since 2001, and expect it to continue for the remainder of 2008. This unfortunate trend will yield an expanding consumer base that looks more to spending what cash they have, rather than running up their credit cards. Read more »

If you don’t know already, I’m a gadget guy. My wife would tell you that I would build a robot to put my pants on for me every morning if there was room in our closet. I even bought the first Blackberry available in my town, grabbing it out of the salesman’s unsuspecting hands, and sprinting like a running back to the cash register ready to leap to a miraculous game-winning technological touchdown. Read more »

It's all over the Internet right now that Google has almost 80% of Search Advertising in the US. This may not look good for them now that they are attempting to look less like the monopoly that Yahoo is making them out to be. But for those looking to advertise online, this goes to prove that Google is the place to do it. The other ad carriers do have something to offer but until we have at least a 50/50 split between Google and Yahoo, like in Japan, then most of your eggs should be in the Google basket.

Everyone nowadays has their own blog (present company included). It's a great way to connect with your customers, share information, and... it's a fun activity for people like me that love to write. But how do you get people reading? It can be a daunting task, but here is a fantastic list of things to improve your readership. Click here to get started!

It happens from time to time. There is some kind of need in marketing or an organization expands, contracts, or is acquired. But if your old domain is doing fairly well in the search engines and attracting a lot of traffic then you should proceed carefully to preserve the value of the domain. Follow these steps:

1. Point single 301 redirects for each page on the old site to the proper URL on the new site.

Recently a company here in Austin posted a frantic email to a newsgroup that I belong to:

The domain name for my soon to be launched startup has been hijacked. Godaddy, the registrar, says that my contact info on the domain (which DID NOT expire) was incorrect so they sent email to the wrong contact info and since it didn't get answered, they gave my domain to someone else who is hiding their contact info. Read more »