Does Your Blog Have a Long Tail

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Most smart bloggers try to focus on a few, key search terms in their blog content. But the reality is, your blog is probably a lot more broad than you think. Last week, I co-published a white paper with Chris Baggott, the CEO of Compendium Blogware (I’m on their advisory board). The free “Blogging’s Long

7 Critical Questions When Outsourcing SEO

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Many agencies without full service digital marketing departments choose to outsource any SEO work to a specialist. While I believe that the present focus on good content makes SEO easier, not harder for traditional agencies (especially PR) to handle in-house, many will continue outsourcing this critical service (or at least until I launch a “How

Agency Advantage Tools #1 – Website Grader

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Welcome to Agency Advantage Tools, a regular blog series at Convince & Convert that spotlights inexpensive or free digital marketing tools. There are literally thousands of different Web sites, applications, plug-ins, widgets and more devoted to helping digital marketers do their jobs better or faster. Most advertising agencies and PR firms are too busy doing

Google to Show Search Volume – Another Blow to Agencies

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In a LOOOOONG overdue move that provides some much-needed transparency to the PPC business, Google has added search volume data to their keyword research tool.  This means that when you use Google to research potential search terms for your clients’ pay-per-click campaign, Google will actually give you an idea of how many people actually search

91% of Top Digital Agencies Not Buying Their Own Brands on PPC

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In a shocking (and embarassing) revelation today, AdWeek uncovered that of the 56 world-class digital marketing agencies featured in their Annual Report Card, just 5 are purchasing their own brand names in PPC. In fairness to the firms, most of them appear at or near the top of organic search results for their own brand

Google’s Popularity is Costing You Money

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Paid search management vendor Covario said today that PPC spending was up 52% in Q1 2008 versus 2007. 52% is a big leap for an already red-hot digital marketing tactic. But perhaps more interesting was the finding that Google took in 85% of the paid search spend in the first quarter. (No wonder Yahoo! rushed

How to calculate your PPC budget and success

Q. I’m interested in pay per click search engine advertising, but I don’t know how much it will cost. Help! A. Projecting costs for pay per click can be as mysterious as Britney Spears’ career plan. Like success in Iraq, multiple factors determine your PPC budget and success level, and they are inter-related. The single

Black Magic: What You Need to Know About the Dark Art of Search Engine Marketing

Thirty six percent of site visits come from a search engine or other Web link, according to Web measurement firm Web Side Story. Betting 36% of your site traffic on the outcome of an ongoing epic duel between geeks who work for search engine companies and the geeks who try to outsmart them seems akin