I’m not a big fan of standalone links pages – pages with long lists of outbound links to third parties that may or may not be relevant to your website or business. They’re really just an artifact from the early days of the web when folks had no idea what to put on their site. In a fit of desperation, someone just said, “Let’s add a links page. Everyone else has one.” Best practices today call instead for integrating relevant external...

I know. “Holiday downtime?” Yeah right. Nonetheless, all the travel (and its inevitable delays) along with the occasional need to retreat from the holiday circus provides a few opportunities to catch up on a little reading. Here are three exceptional reads for the marketer in you. For the Big-Picture Types . . .   Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature Mark Earls (2007) Traditional marketing tends to presume...

Last week, we talked about the DOs of PPC advertising, but the DON’Ts are just as important to maximize the likelihood of success in the world of sponsored search. DON’T . . . set it and forget it. A campaign that performs well one week can completely tank the next. Consumer behavior, market conditions, and the competitive landscape can have significant effects on your PPC performance. At the very least, check your click-through rates (CTR),...

Sponsored search, or PPC (pay-per-click) advertising as an agency marketing tool offers a number of attractive benefits: performance-based spend, low barriers to entry, and substantial targeting opportunities. Here are a few essentials to keep in mind whether you’re just starting out or have been using PPC for a while. . . . DO . . . commit to spend a fair amount of money, or don’t commit at all. One of the best things about PPC advertising...

While nearly as old as the Web itself, online display – or banner – advertising has fallen out of favor in recent years, particularly among advertisers with limited budgets (and who among us doesn’t have a limited budget?). Low click rates, confusing placement options, and the emergence of “cheaper” online marketing channels, such as social media, have relegated online display advertising to the proverbial back burner. Nonetheless, a...