Here are a few notes from a recent cross-country flight. I’m not sure what I was reading at the time (“The Lean Startup?”), but it’s sound advice. Any really good accountant will tell you that the numbers should inform your decisions, not make them. Analytics work best when chasing incremental growth, not opening up new […]
The Religion of Analytics Read More »
The media is finally figuring out figures. The coverage of Nate Silver’s tremendous success at statistical analysis has shown both that sophisticated data analysis can be newsworthy — and have tremendous real-world impact. According to the New Republic, on Nov 5th, Silver’s 538 blog garnered over 20 percent of NYTimes.com’s traffic. (deadlink: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109714/nate-silver-the-times-biggest-brand) While publishing
Media Enters the Age of (Statistical) Reason Read More »
Often forgotten in the development rush, regularly updated XML sitemaps are essential in guaranteeing that search engines crawl all your content. Here is Google on the subject: Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a
The Most Important SEO Tool In the World Read More »
Google Insights is no more. It has been absorbed by Google Trends. Both Trends and Insights have been useful tools for writers and editors looking to improve their articles’ SEO. Google Trends also lends itself nicely to a game I call “Celine Dion or Torture?” where you put in phrases until you find an unrelated,
Google Trends Eats Google Insights, Also “Celine Dion or Torture?” Read More »
Danny Sullivan’s “Search Engine Land” is always a great source of info on the dark continent of search engine optimization. They’ve just released an infographic that covers both factors that are under the control of site owners and those more nebulous elements as “authority,” and “reputation.” It’s a clever cheat sheet, and for most, all
Search Engine Land’s “Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors” Read More »
It may seem self-evident, but, by definition, there are only three paths to digital growth: More new visitors More visits per visitor More page views/engagement per visit That’s it. If you don’t have focused strategies around each path, you can’t sustain growth. Examples of Growth Strategies More new visitors Search (SEO/SEM) Strategic partnerships Advertising
There Are Only Three Digital Growth Strategies Read More »
I’ve worked with most of the major SEO firms and have attended many, many presentations, seminars, conferences and staff meetings about search engine optimization. I’ve heard from almost everyone that SEO is the ‘secret sauce’ of audience development. It is actionable, quantifiable, and other *able things. And like most consulting fads (mobile, say hello to
Why Search Engine Optimization is Important Read More »
Above all, the search engines love high-quality writing. The folks at Google explicitly state that their goal is to connect users with “useful, information-rich site(s)” containing pages that “clearly and accurately describe your content.” And, in fact, most of the advancements in search over the last decade have been aimed toward teaching machines how to
Search Engines Love Great Writing Read More »
Like high school, search is primarily a popularity contest. Google’s inventors, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, built Google around a single insight — that the search engine didn’t have to determine what a website was about or if it was any good. People would do that for them. People would describe the content and vote
How Search Engines Actually Work Read More »
What affects search results? It’s an interesting question, because no one knows for sure. A site called Moz does a survey every year among the major SEO consultants in an attempt to create a snapshot of what matters right now in search. (It speaks to the squishiness of the field that the most credible source
What Actually Affects Search Results Read More »