by Jennifer Laycock

Sometimes it's the really simple advice that can have the most impact on how you do business. That's the basis of Tim's advice over at Convert Offline this week. Tim harkens back to his Yellow Pages days and offers up some great suggestions on building a better local search presence. Now some people might find it odd to learn SEO lessons from something as old school as the Yellow Pages, but Tim offers up some good advice on improving your site.

Tim explains that he fell naturally into strong rankings for local search terms simply by implementing some lessons he learned while crafting good Yellow Page ads.

The first site I got to the first of page of results for a specific keyword, I did so, quite by accident. When I designed the site I did so with PPC in...

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by Jennifer Laycock

I've read a lot of posts lately tearing down the public relations industry for what a poor job they do when pitching bloggers. I've also read (and written) quite a few posts about what a terrible job companies do relating to bloggers and having conversations with them. While there's no doubt companies and PR firms have a long way to go, a blast from my past reminded me that bloggers need to share some responsibility in all this.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Blogger Social event in NYC. It wasn't a conference, it was just a chance for a lot of marketing bloggers to get together and visit with each other. I went because I wanted the chance to make personal contact with a lot of people I've met via blogs and Twitter over the last few...

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by Diana Adams

If you're new to working with PPC, you may be like every other newbie in the world and be confused by the jargon often used. PPC, CPC, CTR, DKI ... It doesn't take long to figure it all out, but in the beginning it would have been nice to have someone lay out the soup for me, so I thought I'd lay it out for you. The obvious ones are: PPC = Pay Per Click; CPC = Cost Per Click; CTR = Click Through Rate; and lastly and maybe not so obvious, DKI = Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

When I was first learning PPC, I had no idea what DKI referred to, so as part of Boot Camp, I hope to help others understand. Essentially what DKI does, is insert the searcher's keyword into the ad text. With search terms bolded in the ad text, your ad stand out among the...

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by Jackie BakerQuality content is one of the key ingredients for improving search engine placement, gaining links, and driving conversions. If your content isn't written well, isn't asking for the conversion, and is hard to read, you're losing a whole lot of sales and leads from your website. People can sniff out your "marketing speak" from a mile away, and won't respond well to fluffy "we're the best" claims. Your content needs to focus on your audience's needs, answer all of the questions they could possibly ask, and tell them what you want them to do.

This week's site clinic features CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com, a service that offers counseling to parents and high school students as they select and apply to colleges.

Target audiences: parents of high school sophomores and...

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