Seth Godin wrote a great article bemoaning the shortage in Search Engine Marketing of podiatrists–i.e., targeted, inexpensive, efficient specialists as opposed to dramatic and overly complex generalists (”Doctors” in his example). He observes that there are people who already know how to be “podiatrists”, but wonders if any of them are trying to market themselves [...]
Author Archives: doneil
Commoditizing Relevance: Can Yahoo! create the next wave in Search?
July 16, 2008 – 1:20 pm
Recently the New York Times published an article about Yahoo!’s attempt to bootstrap the next generation of search by opening their search platform to start-up partners. Yahoo!’s revenue gain from this approach, at least short-term, is probably not going to be significant. But it does suggest a potential threat to Google’s dominance. Why? Simply put, [...]
Easy Social Media Metrics
June 17, 2008 – 11:26 am
One of the biggest obstacles to Social Media being perceived as a legitimate marketing activity is its measurability, especially for companies with an annual revenue of $1 million or less. Paid Search and SEO have fairly specific metrics of effectiveness that can be easily related to the bottom line. Social Media, on the other hand, [...]
Unsnarling Domain Name Hairballs
June 4, 2008 – 7:12 pm
Domain names are a kind of company collateral; they are an extremely inexpensive way to collect terms or phrases that might be useful in the future, even if they are not of value now. At an average price of $10 for uncontested .com domain names plus a low annual maintenance fee, spending a few hours [...]
A Social Media Case Study: Muxtape
May 24, 2008 – 3:29 pm
About six months ago we predicted that a key part of social media and user engagement would be micro-conversions that combined products and commodities with demonstrable value-add services. By this definition, Amazon.com is the most successful social media website around, followed closely by Netflix and the iTunes interface. All of these applications (two are websites, [...]
Coming slowly to Social Media
May 8, 2008 – 4:36 pm
As a company, Pure Visibility has always been a fan of social media. However, individual members of our team have been more or less enthusiastic about it. We’ve had internal discussions about its effectiveness, particularly when compared to more traditional ROI metrics such as Cost Per Conversion, which can be easily and simply proven. Slowly, [...]
Why Search Engine Marketing can help you Beat a Recession
April 16, 2008 – 3:56 pm
Recent economic trends suggest that we’re about to enter in the worst recession in a generation. We all have friends who are hurting, even if we’re closer to Main Street than Wall Street.
In Search Engine Marketing Land, though, things still look pretty good. I was talking to a client today whose product is directly tied [...]
Managing Videos and Tracking Analytics with Tube Mogul
April 2, 2008 – 2:08 pm
Video content is key part of many social media efforts, but tracking and managing the metrics can be difficult, especially as the videos start to propogate across the web. Tube Mogul has developed an integrated platform that manages the delivery, tracking, and market research of web videos in a single integrated product.
Our initial assessment of [...]
Search engines dominate the online user experience: A case study
March 12, 2008 – 3:30 pm
How accurate is the widely held belief that search engines are the core part of the online user experience? Based on individual case studies from our clients, we think it’s pretty accurate, and their influence is increasing rapidly. In our recent annual review for a major national franchise client we discovered that the total search [...]
The Double Honor of Analytics authorization and AdWords certification
February 6, 2008 – 5:51 pm
Pure Visibility is only one of a handful of companies to be both Analytics and AdWords certified. That number is definitely increasing, but for now the list is short, and the process of how we got here is sometimes seen as mysterious to other companies or clients.
It’s really not. The honor of both titles was [...]
